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Tag: Shamima Begum

  • Shamima Begum should be permitted to return home – Terror watchdog

    Shamima Begum should be permitted to return home – Terror watchdog

    The government’s reviewer of terror legislation was anticipated to recommend on Monday that Shamima Begum and other British women who join the Islamic State be permitted to come home.

    Just a few days after Ms. Begum lost her legal battle to return to the UK, Jonathan Hall KC was scheduled to deliver a speech at King’s College London.

    Even though there is “credible suspicion” that she, who was then 15 years old, and two other London schoolgirls were victims of trafficking when they joined the Islamic State in 2015, the government’s decision to take her citizenship on national security grounds stands.

    But Hall KC was expected to argue that British or formerly British women should have the right to return from Syria, which would bring the UK in line with the position in the United States.

    Hall KC, who was appointed as Independent Review of Terrorism Legislation in 2019, was expected to say that the UK is “at a crossroads”, the Times reports, as it comes under pressure from allies including the US to bring them home.

    The US has repatriated dozens of Americans and the Biden administration has said the camps in Syria threaten western security.

    Hall KC was set to acknowledge MI5 fears about the risk that British IS members pose but will point to how they are currently left in limbo in camps in Syria.

    He was expected to say that women are less likely to have travelled for the purpose of fighting and may have less autonomy in being able to leave Syria, the Times reports, but now make up the majority of detained people linked to the UK.

    The power to revoke citizenship was extended by the Immigration Act in 2014 and can only be used in cases where a person has “conducted” themselves “in a manner which is seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK” and where the secretary of state has “reasonable grounds for believing that the person is able, under the law of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom, to become a national of such country or territory”.

    But ministers are under pressure to accept the return of foreign fighters and other IS supporters held in Kurdish-controlled territory in Syria after the defeat of the terror group.

    Ms Begum married and later had three children, all of whom have died. She emerged back into public view four years later in February 2019 after the defeat of IS in Syria forced her and thousands other of the extremist group’s followers to flee into a Kurdish controlled part of the country, where she remains in a detention camp run by the Kurds.

    Following the outcome of Ms Begum’s case, a Home Office spokesperson said: “The Government’s priority remains maintaining the safety and security of the UK and we will robustly defend any decision made in doing so.”

  • British lady who joined ISIS loses her plea for UK citizenship

    British lady who joined ISIS loses her plea for UK citizenship

    The appeal against the decision to revoke Shamima Begum’s British citizenship was denied. Shamima Begum, then 15 years old, departed the United Kingdom to join ISIS.

    After a five-day hearing in November during which her attorneys claimed the UK Home Office had a duty to look into whether she was a victim of trafficking before stripping her of her citizenship, Judge Robert Jay issued the judgement on Wednesday.

    If Begum’s citizenship was revoked legally is what is decided in the judgement, not whether she can go back to Britain.

    Begum, now 23 and living in a camp in northern Syria, flew to the country in 2015 with two school friends to join the ISIS terror group. In February 2019, she re-emerged and made international headlines as an “ISIS bride” after pleading with the UK government to be allowed to return to her home country for the birth of her son.

    Family of ISIS victim says YouTube algorithm is liable. What will the Supreme Court say?

    Then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid removed her British citizenship on February 19, 2019, and Begum’s newborn son died in a Syrian refugee camp the following month. She told UK media she had two other children prior to that baby, who also died in Syria during infancy.

    Begum’s lawyers criticized Wednesday’s ruling as a “lost opportunity to put into reverse a profound mistake and a continuing injustice.”

    “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,” Gareth Pierce and Daniel Furner, of Birnberg Pierce Solicitors, said in a statement seen by UK news agency PA Media.

    “Begum remains in unlawful, arbitrary and indefinite detention without trial in a Syrian camp. Every possible avenue to challenge this decision will be urgently pursued,” it continued.

    Rights group Amnesty International described the ruling as a “very disappointing decision.”

    “The power to banish a citizen like this simply shouldn’t exist in the modern world, not least when we’re talking about a person who was seriously exploited as a child,” Steve Valdez-Symonds, the group’s UK refugee and migrant rights director, said in a statement.

    “Along with thousands of others, including large numbers of women and children, this young British woman is now trapped in a dangerous refugee camp in a war-torn country and left largely at the mercy of gangs and armed groups.”

    “The home secretary shouldn’t be in the business of exiling British citizens by stripping them of their citizenship,” Valdez-Symonds said.

    Javid, the home secretary who removed Begum’s British citizenship, welcomed Wednesday’s ruling, tweeted that it “upheld my decision to remove an individual’s citizenship on national security grounds.”

    “This is a complex case but home secretaries should have the power to prevent anyone entering our country who is assessed to pose a threat to it.” Javid added.

    Begum has made several public appeals as she fought against the government’s decision, most recently appearing in BBC documentary The Shamima Begum Story and a 10-part BBC podcast series.

    In the podcast series she insisted that she is “not a bad person.” While accepting that the British public viewed her as a “danger” and a “risk,” Begum blamed this on her media portrayal.

    She challenged the UK government’s decision to revoke her citizenship but, in June 2019, the government refused her application to be allowed to enter the country to pursue her appeal.

    In 2020, the UK Court of Appeal ruled Begum should be granted leave to enter the country because otherwise, it would not be “a fair and effective hearing.”

    The following year, the Supreme Court reversed that decision, arguing that the Court of Appeal made four errors when it ruled that Begum should be allowed to return to the UK to carry out her appeal.

    Shamima Begum loses legal bid to return home to appeal citizenship revocation (February 2021)

    Begum was 15 when she flew out of Gatwick Airport with two classmates and traveled to Syria.

    The teenagers, all from the Bethnal Green Academy in east London, were to join another classmate who had made the same journey months earlier.

    While in Syria, Begum married an ISIS fighter and spent several years living in Raqqa. Begum then reappeared in al-Hawl, a Syrian refugee camp of 39,000 people, in 2019.

    With ISIS fall, Europe faces returnees dilemma (February 2019)

    Speaking from the camp before giving birth, Begum told UK newspaper The Times that she wanted to come home to have her child. She said she had already had two other children who died in infancy from malnutrition and illness.

    She gave birth to her son, Jarrah, in al-Hawl in February of that year. The baby’s health quickly deteriorated, and he passed away after being transferred from the camp to the main hospital in al-Hasakah City.

    In response to that news, a British government spokesperson told CNN at the time that “the death of any child is tragic and deeply distressing for the family.”

    But the spokesperson added the UK Foreign Office “has consistently advised against travel to Syria” since 2011.

  • Legal battle to reinstate Shamima Begum’s British citizenship unsuccessful

    Legal battle to reinstate Shamima Begum’s British citizenship unsuccessful

    In her court fight against the decision to strip Shamima Begum of her British citizenship, Shamima Begum has lost.

    The 23-year-old was at the centre of a controversy on whether or not she should be permitted to return to the UK.

    Ms Begum and two other east London schoolgirls travelled to Syria to join the so-called Islamic State (IS) in 2015.

    As a result, her British citizenship was revoked on national security grounds after she was found nine months pregnant in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019.

    Ms Begum and her team have challenged the Home Office at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) in an appeal process.

    Mr Justice Jay gave his update this morning.

    He said: ‘The commission has fully recognised the considerable force in the submissions advanced on behalf of Ms Begum that the Secretary of State’s conclusion, on expert advice, that Ms Begum travelled voluntarily to Syria is as stark as it is unsympathetic.

    ‘Further, there is some merit in the argument that those advising the Secretary of State see this as a black and white issue, when many would say that there are shades of grey.’

    Shamima Begum, who fled the UK and joined the Islamic State group, was smuggled into Syria by an intelligence agent for Canada. Files seen by the BBC show he claimed to have shared Ms Begum's passport details with Canada, and smuggled other Britons to fight for IS. Ms Begum's lawyers are challenging the removal of her citizenship, arguing she was a trafficking victim.
    Shamima Begum’s lawyers challenged the removal of her citizenship

    He continued: ‘If asked to evaluate all the circumstances of Ms Begum’s case, reasonable people with knowledge of all the relevant evidence will differ, in particular in relation to the issue of the extent to which her travel to Syria was voluntary and the weight to be given to that factor in the context of all others.

    ‘Likewise, reasonable people will differ as to the threat she posed in February 2019 to the national security of the United Kingdom, and as to how that threat should be balanced against all countervailing considerations.

    ‘However, under our constitutional settlement these sensitive issues are for the Secretary of State to evaluate and not for the commission.’

    The verdict came after one Government minister claimed Ms Begum ‘clearly represents a threat’.

    The Return: Life After Isis is a unique access portrait of a group of Western women who devoted their young lives to ISIS, but who now want to be given the chance to start over back home in the West. Among them, probably the most famous British recruit Shamima Begum, who fled the country when she was 15, and Hoda Muthana from USA who incited her followers on Twitter to go on drivebys and kill Americans. Universally reviled by the media, these women now tell their stories for the very first time.
    The 23-year-old has pleaded for the chance to return back to the UK (Picture: Sky UK)

    Veterans’ affairs minister Johnny Mercer, asked this morning about whether the 23-year-old should be allowed to return to the UK, told GB News: ‘That’s a decision for the Home Secretary and previous home secretaries.

    ‘Certainly, Sajid Javid when he was home secretary made the decision to revoke her citizenship. That’s a decision for them.

    ‘Of course she clearly represents a threat. But there is a lot of information in that case that is not in the public domain.

    ‘I don’t think it is worth discussing it in public. I think those decisions are made in the courts and in the Home Office, and I’m sure they’ll come to the right conclusion.’

    BEST QUALITY AVAILABLE Undated handout photo issued by the Metropolitan Police of east London schoolgirl Shamima Begum, who left Britain as a 15-year-old to join the Islamic State group and is now heavily pregnant and wants to come home.
    Shamima Begum left Britain aged 15 to join the Islamic State group

    During a five-day hearing in November, Ms Begum’s lawyers said that the Home Office had a duty to investigate whether she was a victim of trafficking before stripping her of her British citizenship.

    The specialist tribunal heard said that she was ‘recruited, transported, transferred, harboured and received in Syria for the purposes of ‘sexual exploitation’ and “marriage” to an adult male’.

    At a previous hearing in February 2020, SIAC ruled that the decision to remove her British citizenship was lawful as Ms Begum was ‘a citizen of Bangladesh by descent’ at the time of the decision.

    However, her barristers said in November that the decision made her ‘de facto stateless’, where she had no practical right to citizenship in Bangladesh, with Bangladeshi authorities stating they would not allow her into the country.

    Barristers for the Home Office defended the Government’s decision, arguing that people trafficked to Syria and brainwashed can still be threats to national security, adding that Ms Begum expressed no remorse when she initially emerged from IS-controlled territory.

    Sir James Eadie KC, for the department, said there was ‘no “credible suspicion” that she was a victim of trafficking or was at real and immediate risk of being trafficked prior to her travel from the UK’.

    Sir James said that the then-home secretary Mr Javid took into account Ms Begum’s age, how she travelled to Syria – including likely online radicalisation – and her activity in Syria when making the decision to remove her British citizenship.

  • Court would find committee’s probe into whether Boris Johnson lied over partygate ‘unlawful’, peer says

     

    Privileges Committee has stated that it will continue its investigation into whether Mr. Johnson violated the Parliamentary Privileges by repeatedly informing MPs that there were no lockdown-busting parties taking place in Downing Street.

    A probe into whether Boris Johnson lied to parliament over the partygate scandal would be found “unlawful” by a court, a top barrister has said.

    In a published legal opinion commissioned by the government, Lord Pannick – a crossbench peer who sits in the House of Lords – described the Privileges Committee’s approach to its investigation into whether the PM misled MPs as “unfair” and “flawed”.

    Lord Pannick’s advice states: “We advise Mr Johnson that the committee is proposing to proceed by reference to substantive errors as to the ingredients of contempt and the standard of proof required, and is proposing to adopt an unfair procedure.

    “But for the parliamentary privilege, a court hearing a judicial review application brought by Mr Johnson would declare the committee’s report to be unlawful.”

    His advice says that “the committee has failed to understand that to prove contempt against Mr Johnson, it is necessary to establish that he intended to mislead the House”.

    The top barrister also warned that “the threat of contempt proceedings for unintentional mistakes would have a seriously chilling effect on all members”.

    The publishing of legal advice commissioned by the government is a highly unusual move.

    Labour MP Chris Bryant, who chairs the privileges committee but is not leading the partygate inquiry having recused himself, dismissed the government-commissioned legal opinion by Lord Pannick as “disgraceful bullying” and “wrong on several counts”.

    “Firstly, he fails to mention that the motion that charged the committee makes no mention of ‘intentionally misleading.

    “Nor does he acknowledge that many aspects of standards processes have changed over the years, including the introduction of the right of ministers to correct the record through a written ministerial statement – which was used 200 times last year.”

    He continued: “It’s time this disgraceful bullying stopped. Let’s hear and see the evidence. If Johnson has a good case to make, he’ll be vindicated. If not, he should take his punishment.”

    Lord Pannick QC arrives at the Supreme Court, London, where judges are considering legal challenges to Prime Minister Boris Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament. PA Photo. Picture date: Thursday September 19, 2019. The Supreme Court is hearing appeals from two separate challenges brought in England and Scotland to the prorogation of Parliament. See PA story COURTS Brexit. Photo credit should read: Aaron Chown/PA Wire
    Image:Lord Pannick said the committee’s approach to the probe into whether the PM lied to Parliament over partygate is ‘unfair’

    Meanwhile, shadow leader of the House of Commons Thangam Debbonaire told BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme that not allowing the Commons inquiry to investigate whether Mr Johnson corrected the record over his party gate denials would amount to a cover-up.

    Lord Pannick is a crossbench peer who has previously acted against the government for anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller and Shamima Begum over the removal of her British citizenship.

    Although Mr Johnson is due to leave Number 10 next week, the Privileges Committee has said it will go ahead with its inquiry into whether Mr Johnson committed a  bcontempt of parliament by telling MPs on several occasions that there were no lockdown-busting parties in Downing Street and across Whitehall.

    If the committee finds there has been contempt, it can recommend a sanction on the PM – but it is up to the House of Commons to accept or reject that recommendation.

    Such a sanction could include Mr Johnson being suspended from the Commons or even kicked out in a by-election after a recall petition.

  • Canadian spy, Shamima Begum smuggled school girl to Syria

    A Canadian intelligence agent helped Shamima Begum get into Syria after she escaped the UK and joined the Islamic State.

    According to documents obtained by the BBC, he claimed to have smuggled other Britons to fight for IS and given Canada Ms. Begum’s passport information.

    The loss of Ms. Begum’s citizenship is being contested by her attorneys on the grounds that she was a victim of trafficking.

    Canada and the UK declined to respond to questions about security.

    Ms Begum was 15 when she and two other east London schoolgirls – Kadiza Sultana, 16, and 15-year-old Amira Abase – traveled to Syria to join the IS group in 2015.

    At the main Istanbul bus station, the girls met Mohammed Al Rasheed, who would facilitate their journey to IS-controlled Syria.

    A senior intelligence officer, at an agency that is part of the global coalition against IS, has confirmed to the BBC that Rasheed was providing information to Canadian intelligence while smuggling people to IS.

    The BBC has obtained a dossier on Rasheed that contains information gathered by law enforcement and intelligence, as well as material recovered from his hard drives, which provide extraordinary detail about how he operated.

    He told authorities that he had gathered information on the people he helped into Syria because he was passing it to the Canadian embassy in Jordan.

    Rasheed, who was arrested in Turkey within days of smuggling Ms Begum to IS, told authorities he had shared a photo of the passport the British schoolgirl was using.

    The Metropolitan Police were searching for her, although by the time Canada received her passport details, Ms Begum was already in Syria.

    The dossier shows that Ms Begum was moved to Syria through a substantial IS people-smuggling network that was controlled from the group’s de-facto capital in Raqqa.

    Rasheed was in charge of the Turkish side of this network and facilitated the travel of British men, women, and children to IS for at least eight months before he helped Ms Begum and her two friends.

    Ms Begum told the BBC’s forthcoming I’m Not A Monster podcast: “He organized the entire trip from Turkey to Syria… I don’t think anyone would have been able to make it to Syria without the help of smugglers.

    “He had helped a lot of people come in… We were just doing everything he was telling us to do because he knew everything, we didn’t know anything.”

    Rasheed kept information about the people he helped, often photographing their ID documents or secretly filming them on his phone.

    One recording shows Ms Begum and her friends getting out of a taxi and into a waiting car not far from the Syrian border.