Shamima Begum, who left the United Kingdom’s city of London to join the Islamic State (IS) in Syria as a schoolgirl approximately eight years ago, on Wednesday (February 22), lost her appeal against the decision to revoke her British citizenship. She left the UK as a 15-year-old with her two friends who have reportedly passed away in two separate incidents. In 2019, Begum was stripped of her British citizenship by then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid as a national security risk.
Who is Shamima Begum?
The now 23-year-old was born in London to parents of Bangladeshi heritage, Begum left for Syria to join ISIS in 2015. She was reported to be the first woman to leave the UK to join the terrorist organisation two years later, as per Sky News. Begum who was attending the Bethnal Green Academy and resided in eastern London was reportedly radicalised by someone called Aqsa Mahmood.
During an interview, Renu Begum, Shamima's elder sister holds a picture of her in 2015. (File Photo: AFP)
She went on to marry an IS fighter and gave birth to three children all of whom died as infants. Begum is currently living in northern Syria’s Roj camp which is run by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Her case made international headlines in 2019 after she was found in a displacement camp by a journalist as an “ISIS bride”.
At the time she was nine months pregnant and urged the UK government to allow her to return to her home country to give birth to her child, as per media reports. However, her citizenship was revoked by the home secretary and Begum has since challenged the decision.
The recent verdict
The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), rejected Begum’s appeal. Judge Robert Jay, of the commission which hears appeals against decisions to remove citizenship on national security grounds, gave the decision after a five-day hearing in November. In the previous hearing, Begum’s lawyers had argued that it was the home office’s duty to investigate whether she was a victim of trafficking before revoking her citizenship.
Justice Jay, who wrote the judgment published on Wednesday said the commission finds “credible suspicion" that Begum had been trafficked to Syria for “sexual exploitation”. However, this reason was deemed “insufficient” for them to conclude that the home secretary’s decision was unlawful. The ruling also means that she would be barred from entering the UK from Syria, as per BBC.
The SIAC judge also said that the officials in London are seeing this as a “black and white issue” and the government’s witnesses’ evidence to the tribunal “betrayed an all-or-nothing approach”. Whereas, the commission was concerned about the security services’ “apparent downplaying of the significance of radicalisation and grooming, in stating that what happened to Ms Begum is not unusual”, said justice Jay.
The SIAC concluded that there were “arguable breaches of duty on the part of various State bodies” which allowed Begum to leave the country, said Jay, in a summary of the judgement.
“This secretary of state, speaking through Sir James (Eadie KC), maintains that national security is a weighty factor and that it would take a very strong countervailing case to outweigh it,” said the SIAC judge.
He added, “However, under our constitutional settlement these sensitive issues are for the secretary of state to evaluate and not for the commission.” Notably, the commission does not have the power to rule if Begum is allowed to return to the UK, even if it found that her citizenship should not have been stripped.
“Nowhere near over”: Begum’s legal team
In a statement, Begum’s lawyers, Gareth Pierce and Daniel Furner, of Birnberg Pierce Solicitors criticised the ruling and called it a “lost opportunity” to reverse the “profound mistake and a continuing injustice”. They added, “The outcome is that there is now no protection for a British child trafficked out of the UK if the home secretary invokes national security,” as per media reports.
Begum’s lawyers also called her “indefinite detention” in Syria, “unlawful and arbitrary”. According to the BBC, they said the case was “nowhere near over” and the decision will be challenged.
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