Shamima Begum has lost her fight for British citizenship, eight years after she left the United Kingdom as a 15-year-old schoolgirl to join Islamic State (ISIS).
Shamima Begum, who left east London at age 15 to join the Islamic State, had been challenging the decision taken by the then home secretary, Sajid Javid, in 2019 to strip her of her British citizenship.
The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) decided this decision was lawful and ruled that the suspicion she’d been trafficked to Syria was inadequate for her to succeed in the appeal.
The judge, Mr Justice Jay, found that there was a credible suspicion she was the target of trafficking, nevertheless, Mr Justice Jay concluded that the Home Secretary wasn’t formally required to consider this when he removed her citizenship.
Mr Justice Jay also said the Secretary of State’s conclusion that she travelled willingly to Syria was as stark as it was unsympathetic.
Shamima Begum’s lawyer said that it was far from over and would be contesting the decision. Their statement read: “Regrettably, this is a lost opportunity to put into reverse a profound mistake and a continuing injustice.”
Shamima Begum married the notoriously hardline IS member Dutch national Yago Riedijk, 27, aged just 15 and she had three children with him who all later died.
She was discovered by a British journalist in a refugee camp in 2019, after IS lost the ground war in Syria, thus making the government knowledgeable that she was still alive.
Shamima Begum’s British citizenship was then stripped and she was barred from entering Britain following being considered a threat to the nation, she’s been fighting to return to the United Kingdom ever since.
Bahrain and Nicaragua, very recently are the only nations other than the United Kingdom that strip citizenship in bulk. Since 2000, the United Kingdom has deprived at least 212 people of citizenship, more than ten times as many as France or Australia.
In 2020, the Court of Appeal gave her permission to return to the United Kingdom to appeal her revoked citizenship. Then in 2021, the Supreme Court overturned this, finding national security fears outweighed the right to an effective hearing.
Giving the judgment of the tribunal, Mr Justice Jay said that reasonable people would differ over the circumstances of Shamima Begum’s case and that those advising the Secretary of State see this as a black-and-white issue when many would say that there are shades of grey.
Shamima Begum and her two friends were not stopped by the police, school and local authority and the commission said that there were state failures and possible breaches of the state’s corollary protective duty, between December 2014 and February 2015, which could be explored.
Shamima Begum might want to come back to this country but our Government will definitely not let it happen. However, she was a 15-year-old girl departing the United Kingdom through a British terminal that let her through. Were there no alarm bells ringing when she arrived at the terminal or even going through the departure gates with her friends? Perhaps someone was paid off to allow them through the departure gates?
Whether she was brainwashed by ISIS along with her school friends does make you wonder, but she did go on to enthusiastically recruit others into the bloodthirsty regime and was part of a group that aggressively policed morality. A group that battered women in the street for showing even a wrist.
She was recruited into ISIS, but did she go willingly or was she brainwashed? I don’t think we will ever know. But she was 15 years old, just a child – she was a British citizen, and we have children younger than that in the United Kingdom who’ve committed vile crimes and murders, but we don’t throw away the key.
She should be allowed back, but put in prison for a very long time, or at least until such time she’s been rehabilitated because she was legally a child at the time. What’s different here is that she isn’t the right colour or faith.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 