'ISIS Bride' Shamima Begum banned from returning to the UK
ISIS recruit Shamima Begum has been banned from the UK after losing her Court of Appeal challenge over the removal of her British citizenship.
Dubbed the 'ISIS Bride', she ran off to Syria to join terror group with two schoolfriends in 2015 during the February half term holidays to marry a notoriously hardline Islamic State member. Today, dismissing her appeal against the removal of the British passport Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr said: “It could be argued the decision in Ms Begum’s case was harsh. It could also be argued that Ms Begum is the author of her own misfortune. But it is not for this court to agree or disagree with either point of view.”
After the judgement Begum's solicitor Daniel Furner said he has promised her and the Government “we are not going to stop fighting until she does get justice and until she is safely back home”.
Begum was one of three bright straight-A students from Bethnal Green Academy - along with Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15 - who fled east London and travelled through Turkey to join one of the most savage terrorist gangs in history. The roles the three played in the caliphate remain uncertain with Begum claiming she was simply a housewife, and has lost three children during her time there.
Intelligence sources have said she was involved with stitching explosives into suicide vests. She denied having witnessed executions but admitted having seen severed heads discarded in a bin. Sir James Eadie KC, for the Home Office, said the “key feature” of Ms Begum’s case was national security. “The fact that someone is radicalised, and may have been manipulated, is not inconsistent with the assessment that they pose a national security risk.”
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Begum left east London aged 15 to join the Islamic State (BBC/Joshua Baker)Sultana is believed to have died in a Russian airstrike a few weeks later in May 2016, but that has never been independently confirmed. Abase married ISIS fighter Abdullah Elmir, an 18-year-old Australian, who was nicknamed the Ginger Jihadi, because of his ginger hair. He was killed in a drone strike in December 2015. Abase had been communicating with her mum Fetia Hussen back in the UK via social media but the messages suddenly stopped and her mum now believes her daughter is dead too.
Begum has claimed Abase is still alive. Begum married IS member Dutch national Yago Riedijk, 27, when she was 15 and had three children with him who all later died. She was stripped of her British citizenship in 2019 and lost her appeal to get it back in 2023. She reportedly now sells food parcels she has been given in a detention camp by aid agencies to make enough money for Western clothes and hair dye.
Back in November 2022, her lawyers argued Begum was a child trafficking victim and should be allowed to return to the UK. At the start of a five-day hearing at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) today, Samantha Knights KC, for Ms Begum, said: "This case concerns a British child aged 15 who was persuaded, influenced and affected with her friends by a determined and effective Isis propaganda machine."
She has lost three children since leaving the UK (ITV)In written submissions, Ms Knights said there was "overwhelming" evidence that Ms Begum had been "recruited, transported, transferred, harboured and received in Syria for the purposes of 'sexual exploitation' and 'marriage' to an adult male". "She was following a well-known pattern by which Isis cynically recruited and groomed female children, as young as 14, so that they could be offered as 'wives' to adult men," the barrister added.
Her lawyers brought a bid to overturn that decision at the Court of Appeal, with the Home Office opposing the challenge. Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr, Lord Justice Bean and Lady Justice Whipple handed down the ruling on her appeal today.
The court of appeal case is the latest in Begum’s long-running legal battle against the UK authorities. The UK has allowed just two adults to return since the end of the ground war against the Islamic State more than four years ago, lagging behind allies such as Australia, Canada, France and Germany. Two years ago, a British man exclusively went public in an interview with the Mirror with his pleas to evacuate his dangerously ill sister from one of the camps in northeast Syria.
Shamima Begum and her friends captured on CCTV leaving the UK (AFP/Getty Images)Deserted by their motherlands and now under the care of a Kurdish-led force that does not want them, those who once lived under the ISIS caliphate are imprisoned indefinitely without charge in a sprawling camp that holds around 14,000 foreigners. Rights & Security International (RSI) say the UK has "dragged its heels" on the issue, falling far behind other Western countries including the US who have repatriated "most" of their nationals.
At a hearing in October, Samantha Knights KC told the court the Government had failed to consider the legal duties owed to Ms Begum as a potential victim of trafficking or as a result of "state failures" in her case. However, Sir James Eadie KC, for the department, said decisions over whether someone is a victim of trafficking or whether they should be deprived of their citizenship "have fundamentally different bases and roles".
The barrister later said the "key feature" of her case was national security. During the appeal bid, Begum's lawyers said the UK failed to have a "full and effective" investigation into how she was allegedly trafficked. In its ruling last year, the SIAC concluded there were "arguable breaches of duty" by state bodies, including the Metropolitan Police, Tower Hamlets Council and Ms Begum's school, in not preventing her from travelling to Syria.
Ms Knights told the Court of Appeal at the start of the three-day hearing these "failures" could have also been unlawful and contributed to Begum's trafficking. However, Sir James said the SIAC was right to find there was "no direct connection between any potential failures, by other public authorities, in 2015" and ministers' decision to deprive Ms Begum of her citizenship.
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Human rights charity Reprieve's director Maya Foa said: "This whole episode shames ministers who would rather bully a child victim of trafficking than acknowledge the UK’s responsibilities. Stripping citizenship in bulk and abandoning British families in desert prisons is a terrible, unsustainable policy designed to score cheap political points.
"Rather than demonise Shamima Begum, ministers should reckon with the institutional failures that enabled ISIS to traffic vulnerable British women and girls.What the courts have recognised today is that this was a political decision. It is now a political problem, and the government holds the key to solving it.
"If the government thinks that Shamima Begum has committed a crime, she should be prosecuted in a British court. Citizenship stripping is not the answer.”
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