Shamima Begum loses last problem over removing of UK citizenship
Shamima Begum today lost her final bid to challenge the removal of her British citizenship after justices at the Supreme Court ruled she could not appeal again.
The jihadi bride lost an appeal last year against the decision to revoke her citizenship on national security grounds at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC).
Her citizenship was revoked after she was found in a Syrian refugee camp following her travel to the country as a 15-year-old to join the Islamic State group in 2015.
Shamima Begum, pictured in BBC programme The Shamima Begum Story in February 2023
Shamima Begum speaks to ITV from the al-Roj prison camp in Syria in September 2021
Shamima Begum, 19, in a Syrian refugee camp, being shown a copy of the Home Office letter which stripped her of her British citizenship, in a grab from an ITV broadcast in February 2019
Today, justices at the UK’s highest court said 24-year-old Begum from Bethnal Green could not appeal again after she lost a Court of Appeal bid in February.
In their decision, Lords Reed, Hodge and Lloyd-Jones denied Begum the green light to go to the Supreme Court, finding her proposed appeal grounds ‘do not raise an arguable point of law’.
The three justices said that there was no arguable challenge to the Court of Appeal’s decision, including on whether Begum should have been able to make representations to the then-Home Secretary before she was removed of her citizenship.
Dismissing her Court of Appeal challenge in February, the Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr, said: ‘It could be argued the decision in Ms Begum’s case was harsh.
Shamima Begum travelled to Syria as a 15-year-old to join the Islamic State group (file image)
Shamima Begum (right), then 15, at Gatwick Airport on her way to Syria in February 2015
Lord Chief Justice Dame Sue Carr, during a live broadcast at the Court of Appeal in London on February 23 this year where she announced that Shamima Begum had lost her challenge
‘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.
‘The only task of the court was to assess whether the deprivation decision was unlawful. Since it was not, Ms Begum’s appeal is dismissed.’
In March, Court of Appeal judges rejected Begum’s initial bid to take her case to the Supreme Court.
Following that decision, Begum’s solicitor Daniel Furner said: ‘I want to say that I’m sorry to Shamima and to her family that after five years of fighting she still hasn’t received justice in a British court, and to promise her and promise the Government that we are not going to stop fighting until she does get justice and until she is safely back home.’
