Should Shamima Begum be allowed again to UK? Have your say as row heats up
Shamima Begum is expected to be freed from a Syrian detention camp within days, raising fresh questions on where she could go as her lawyers argue she should be allowed to return to the UK
Shamima Begum could reportedly be released from a Syrian detention camp within days(Image: Getty Images)
A fresh battle is looming over Shamima Begum amid reports she could be freed from a Syrian detention camp within days.
The 26-year-old former ISIS bride has launched a fresh appeal to be allowed back into the UK. But the Government has vowed to fight tooth and nail to prevent this happening.
London-born Ms Begum, who was 15 when she left to join ISIS, was stripped of her British citizenship in 2019. Her lawyers 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 decision to revoke her citizenship.
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Earlier this month Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood vowed to “robustly” defend it. She said the Government will not budge, telling MPs: “Let me be very clear that the case in relation to Shamima Begum has been litigated by the previous government all the way to the UK Supreme Court, who did not hear the last appeal on this because all legal questions have been now dealt with.
“We have accepted that position, and our position as a government on this case will not change. We will robustly defend this at the European Court of Human Rights.”
But there are questions about where Ms Begum will go. The Syrian government has announced a ceasefire with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), taking almost full control of the country and dismantling the Kurdish-led forces which controlled the north east for more than a decade.
Around 10 British men, 20 women and 40 children are believed to be in detention facilities in northern Syria. Ms Begum is understood to be in the al-Roj camp in the region.
Former Tory attorney general Dominic Grieve has argued that Begum is the “responsibility of the UK”. And in a rare moment of agreement both ex-Tory Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg and Labour peer Alf Dubs – who escaped the Nazis as a child – both said revoking her citizenship was wrong.
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.”
Ms Begum, now 26, travelled to Syria in 2015 alongside two schoolfriends – Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana. Both have been reported dead.
