Born: 23.09.1987;

Place of Birth: Torre del Greco, Italy;

Gender: Female;

Nationality: Italian;

Address: Unknown;

General Info:
Maria Giulia Sergio, originally from Torre del Greco, had moved approximately ten years ago to Inzago, a small town the outskirts of Milan and was living with her family in complicated economic conditions.

Maria Giulia Sergio was a Neapolitan Catholic who, after converting to Islam in 2007, appeared in TV shows under the name of Fatima az Zahra, defending the wearing of the veil.

Sergio was the first woman among 59 Italian residents, many of them migrants from North Africa and the Balkans, to travel from Italy to Syria to join the Islamic State. The Italian press have dubbed her “Lady Jihad”.

Maria Giulia ‘Fatima’ Sergio is believed to be recruited to the Islamic State (ISIS) fundamentalist militia by Haik Bushra.

Maria Giulia Sergio hailed jihad on several occasion while on Skype with her family and said that those who reject jihad are misbelievers and their heads must be chopped off. She claimed that she can’t wait until al-Baghdadi will give the authorization for women to do jihad because she wants to die as shahid. She constantly instigated her family to “kill the misbelievers”.

Maria Gulia Sergio was initially married to a Moroccan citizen residing in Italy and she was attending the faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Milan. The marriage did not go well though; some have speculated that she did not find her husband religious enough, but people who were close to the couple claimed that the reason was mainly cultural.

The family of her former husband did not accept her as an Italian and even though she even reached the point of wearing a niqab, it did not help, while other sources have pointed out economic issues that the couple had: the divorce was unavoidable.

Immediately after, Maria Giulia told a friend of hers that she was looking for someone strictly religious and managed to meet Aldo Kobuci thanks to a friend, Albanian citizen Gjecaj Lubjana, while attending an Islamic book market in san Paolo d’Argon, together with her sister Marianna.

At the time when Kobuzi moved to Italy, Sergio, originally from Naples, was living with a family in an area between Milan and Bergamo. Kobuzi’s uncle says his nephew traveled from Grossetto to see her in Milan and they immediately liked each other.

According to official sources, Aldo Kobuzi and Maria Giulia Sergio got married on September 17th 2014 in Treviglio’s Islamic center and left for Syria shortly after, together with Aldo’s mother, Donika. On September 21 their mobiles were detected at Rome’s Leonardo Da Vinci airport, while the following day in Turkish territory.

Their trip was organized and financed thanks to the network of Genci Balla, head of the recruiting network in Albania and Bujar Hysa.