Lisa Smith told gardaí after she had been repatriated from Syria in December 2019, that she did not support the Islamic State militant group and had been led astray.
In her interviews with detectives, which were read to the Special Criminal Court today, the former Defence Forces member said she never owned a gun or used a weapon in Syria and realised she had made a mistake in going there.
She also said she was scared during the bombings and asked her husband, who she said beat her, how they were going to get out.
The 39-year-old has pleaded not guilty to financing terrorism and membership of the terrorist group, ISIS.
The 100-page second interview that Ms Smith gave to gardaí over two-and-a-half hours in custody in December 2019 was read out at her trial for alleged terrorist offences.
She outlined how she travelled across the Turkish border, that all her money - €7,000 - was stolen from her and she was kept in a house with 50 or 60 women in Syria for five months.
Ms Smith said she agreed to marry a man she did not really want to, who took her to Raqqa and beat her "very badly".
She said before the conflict started she stayed at home cleaning and cooking, trying to learn Arabic and going out and about with her husband walking and shopping.
Ms Smith said she got pregnant and moved, and she insisted she never owned or used a gun.
Her husband would not let her read or watch videos and would not tell her what was going on, she said, and when they started moving from place to place with her daughter she started panicking.
She told gardai that she said to her husband: "We came here for the Islamic State ... there is no Islamic State, how are we going to get out?"
Ms Smith said they were bombed with cluster bombs and bullets were hitting her house. She said she was "so scared ... we could have been killed."
"I spent ten years in the army," she said. "I come out of it and go through war."
Ms Smith said she ended up in a camp after her husband put her and her daughter on a truck with no bags, money or food. She said she saw people getting shot, women getting shot, babies dying and people with serious injuries who did not go to hospital.
"People don't know the reality of what happened in Islamic State," she told gardaí.
When they asked her would she go back there, she replied: "No way. No I've had enough, I've done my time. It was four years spent in prison.
"They put you in prison, torture and rape you. You are not allowed to come home. Europe doesn't want you. If you go home you go to prison."
Ms Smith also said that many people wanted to go home and were so upset because they thought they were going to an Islamic State.
"I’m just glad I'm home," she told gardaí.
She also told gardaí about life in the camps and her meetings with journalist Norma Costelloe, who she said she thought was going to help her and carry her story to the Government.
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Ms Smith said there was one shop for 300 people in the camp and she had to stand in a queue for five hours just trying to get oranges for her daughter. They were living in tents, she said, with water coming in. People went to the toilet in public and threw it in the drains because the toilets were disgusting, she said.
She said when she got out of the camp she walked 10-15km across desert, her feet were sore and exhausted and people came out of their houses with water and helped them. She said she and her daughter were handed over to Turkey and were "there till Ireland took us, and now I'm here".
Ms Smith told gardaí that she did not support Islamic State and many things Islamic State did. She said a lot of people wanted to go there because "people want more".
"If only they knew and lived through it to see the reality," she told gardaí. "I can tell you there are probably kids thinking Islamic State is great. If only they knew, someone is going to do something stupid. I don't support them. I don’t support many things Islamic State did.
"A lot of people, we’ve been led astray. We had to come through all that and go home and go to prison because people think we joined the group. Our lives have been turned upside down and we still have to suffer after it."
She also said she discovered that many things she was told were wrong and there were many things she did no know, that to make hijrah (migrate to Islamic State) was not obligatory.
"I didn’t know all of this information before I went. Everyone got excited and just ran. I didn't know if the country was going to be stable. Nobody had a brain, we made our mistakes, what can you do?" she said.
Ms Smith is accused of being a member of the terrorist group styling itself as the Islamic State between 28 October 2015 and 1 December 2019 at a location outside the State.
She has also been accused of financing terrorism by sending €800 (£670) in assistance by Western Union money transfer to a named individual in 2015.
She has pleaded not guilty to both charges. The trial continues.
