In a rare interview from prison, a widow of the Islamic State group’s leader has shared her account of their life. Umm Hudaifa was the first wife of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and was married to him while he oversaw IS’s brutal rule over large parts of Syria and Iraq. She is now being held in an Iraqi jail while she is investigated for terrorism-related crimes.

In the summer of 2014, Umm Hudaifa was living in Raqqa, IS’s then-stronghold in Syria, with her husband.

As the wanted leader of the extremist jihadist group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi often spent time in other locations, and on one of those occasions he sent a guard to the house to pick up two of their young sons. “He told me they were going on a trip to teach the boys how to swim,” says Umm Hudaifa.

There was a television in the house that she used to watch in secret. “I used to turn it on when he wasn’t at home,” she says, explaining he thought it didn’t work. She says she was cut off from the world and he hadn’t let her watch television or use any other technology, such as mobile phones, since 2007.

A few days after the guard took the children, she says she switched on the television and got “a huge surprise”. She saw her husband addressing the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, showing himself for the first time as the head of the self-declared Islamic caliphate. It was only weeks after his fighters had seized control of the area.

The footage of al-Baghdadi making his first public appearance in years, with his long beard, dressed in black robes and demanding allegiance from Muslims, was seen across the world and marked a key moment for IS as it swept across Iraq and Syria.

Umm Hudaifa says she was shocked to find out her sons were in Mosul with him rather than learning to swim in the Euphrates.

She describes the scene from the crowded prison in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, where she is being held while Iraqi authorities investigate her role in IS and the group’s crimes. It’s noisy as inmates accused of various crimes, including drug use and sex work, are moved around the prison and food deliveries arrive from outside.

We find a quiet spot in the library and speak for nearly two hours. During our conversation she paints herself as a victim who tried to escape from her husband and denies she was involved in any of IS’s brutal activities.

This is a stark contrast to the way she is described in a court case brought by Yazidis who were abducted and raped by members of IS – they accuse her of colluding in the sexual enslavement of kidnapped girls and women.

During the interview, she doesn’t raise her head, not even once. She’s wearing black and only reveals part of her face, down to the bottom of her nose.

Umm Hudaifa was born in 1976 into a conservative Iraqi family and married Ibrahim Awad al-Badri, later known by the pseudonym Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in 1999.