Major replace in Shamima Begum bid to return as ministers refuse to budge
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will ‘robustly defend’ the decision to revoke ISIS bride Shamima Begum’s citizenship as her lawyers argue she was ‘deceived’ for the purposes of sexual exploitation
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will “robustly defend” the decision to revoke ISIS bride Shamima Begum’s citizenship in the face of a fresh legal challenge.
Lawyers for Ms Begum argue she was “lured, encouraged and deceived for the purposes of sexual exploitation” at the age of 15. The European Court of Human Rights has demanded answers from Britain over the controversial move.
London-born Ms Begum, who was a schoolgirl when she travelled to territory held by the so-called Islamic State, is challenging the decision to strip her of UK citizenship in February 2019. But a Government source said Ms Mahmood will not budge.
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Former Tory Home Secretary Sir Sajid Javid made the move after she was branded a threat to national security. Ms Begum, who married an ISIS fighter, is currently in a Syrian camp.
Her lawyers are challenging the decision under Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights – prohibition of slavery and forced labour. It comes after the UK Supreme Court denied her the chance to challenge the move.
Judges in Strasbourg have asked the Home Office whether the Government should have considered if Ms Begum was a victim of trafficking. Lawyer Gareth Peirce said: “It is impossible to dispute that a 15-year-old British child was in 2014/15 lured, encouraged and deceived for the purposes of sexual exploitation to leave home and travel to Isil-controlled territory for the known purpose of being given, as a child, to an Isil fighter to propagate children for the Islamic State.
“It is equally impossible not to acknowledge the catalogue of failures to protect a child known for weeks beforehand to be at high risk when a close friend had disappeared to Syria in an identical way and via an identical route. It has already been long conceded that the then home secretary, Sajid Javid, who took the precipitous decision in 2019 very publicly to deprive Ms Begum of citizenship, had failed entirely to consider the issues of grooming and trafficking of a school child in London and of the state’s consequent duties.”
But a Government source said the Home Secretary was prepared to fight a challenge to the decision to revoke Ms Begum’s citizenship. They said: “The Home Secretary will robustly defend the decision to revoke Shamima Begum’s citizenship, which has been tested and upheld time and again in our domestic courts. The Home Secretary will always put this country’s national security first.”
The Conservatives said Ms Begum should not be allowed back into the UK “under any circumstances”.
Ms Begum, now 26, travelled to Syria in 2015 alongside two schoolfriends – Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana. Both have been reported dead.
Shortly after arriving in Syria she married a 23-year-old ISIS recruit. Ms Begum gave birth to three children, all of who have died.
