Shamima Begum's mother-in-law says she should be allowed back to UK

11 February 2023 , 12:40

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Shamima Begum's mother-in-law says she should be allowed back to UK

Shamima Begum's mother-in-law says she should be allowed back into the UK to rebuild her life.

Ankie Riedijk, the mother of Begum's Dutch jihadist husband Yago Riedijk, insisted that the pair should both face justice for travelling to Syria to join ISIS but that their governments also must take responsibility for them becoming radicalised.

Shamima Begum has been stripped of her British citizenship and is banned from returning to the UK following her decision to travel to the Islamic State in Syria in 2015.

She is currently challenging the Home Office decision and is in a legal battle with the British government to have her citizenship restored so she can return to London.

Riedijk fathered three children with Begum, all of whom died (BBC)

The 23-year-old currently lives in a Kurdish-run camp in northeast Syria, which has once been described as an "open-air prison."

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Mr Riedijk, then-23, married Ms Begum days after she arrived in Syria, when she was 15. They had three children together, all of whom died.

The pair are still legally married but have not seen one another since ISIS lost the ground war in Syria in 2019.

Mrs Riedijk told the Mail: "I am convinced that Shamima should be allowed to go home and build her life there."

In a BBC documentary aired last week, The Shamima Begum Story, Ms Begum said she does not want to be with her husband.

Riedijk said he would love to see her again but the Brit said she would not put up with his treatment.

Shamima Begum in BBC The Shamima Begum Story (BBC)

In the documentary she details an abusive relationship with him.

Riedijk has previously spoken much more openly about his life with ISIS. He once told the BBC he had attended the stoning of a woman and saw piles of corpses of murdered IS prisoners.

The 31-year-old admitted to fighting for the Islamic State, but said he has since rejected the group. He was suspected by police of being involved in a terrorist plot in the Netherlands and was convicted in his absence in 2018 of membership of a terrorist group.

He is currently being held in a Kurdish detention centre in north-eastern Syria and faces a six-year jail term for joining a terror organisation if he returns to the Netherlands.

Shamima Begum

Mrs Riedijk said: "From the beginning we have tried not to get involved in any kind of publicity. But we were warned that Yago had given an interview about Shamima."

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ISIS seized large swathes of land in Iraq and Syria where they established a caliphate with strict Sharia law.

They committed genocide against the Yazidi religious group in Iraq and brutal beheadings and televised executions of western journalists and aid workers were commonplace.

Rachel Hagan