The Shamima conundrum is back to haunt UK

SHAMIMA BEGUM—one of the three east London schoolgirls who went to Syria to join ISIS—lost the first stage of her appeal against the government annulling her British citizenship.

Begum, 20, had left the UK in February 2015. She married a Dutch jihadi and lived under ISIS for nearly four years.

Last year, as the ‘caliphate’ fell, she was found in a Syrian refugee camp, nine months pregnant with her third baby. She had lost two children due to the malnutrition and disease.

Begum wanted to return to the UK, but infamously said she did not regret joining ISIS. After learning her case, Home Secretary Sajid Javid revoked Begum’s citizenship.

The third baby died within three weeks after birth. The issue came to a boil, but Javid stuck to his guns and said he would not “shy away from using those powers at my disposal to protect this country”.

Begum has been claiming that losing her British citizenship left her “stateless”, and vulnerable to torture and “real risk of death”.

The case was referred to a tribunal, led by Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) president Mrs Justice Elisabeth Laing, which, on Friday (7), ruled that Javid’s decision did not lead to Begum being stateless.

Representing the Home Office, Jonathan Glasson QC argued that Ms Begum “was a Bangladeshi citizen by descent, in accordance with Bangladeshi law, and so was not rendered stateless by the deprivation decision”.

Bangladesh, however, had said last year that Begum had “nothing to do” with the country and there was “no question” of giving her citizenship.

“She has never sought Bangladeshi citizenship and her parents are also British citizens,” said Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abdul Momen.

“The British government is responsible for her. They will have to deal with her.”

Momen also added that Bangladesh followed a “zero-tolerance policy” towards terrorism, and Begum would “have to face death penalty” if she were to be tried in the country.

Begum’s lawyer at that time, Tasnime Akunjee, too, had stated that “in no way is she Bangladesh’s problem”.

Begum’s current lawyer, Daniel Furner, said he would “immediately initiate an appeal” against the ruling “as a matter of exceptional urgency”.

Judge Doron Blum, who announced the tribunal’s verdict, said there had been no violation of the Home Office’s “extraterritorial human rights policy by exposing Ms Begum to a real risk of death or inhuman or degrading treatment”.

He enumerated the three “primary conclusions” the tribunal had arrived at:

“One, we conclude that the decision did not make her stateless.

“Two, we conclude that the decision did not breach the Secretary of State policy when he made decision one.

“The third is whether Ms Begum can have a fair and effective appeal. We accept that Ms Begum cannot have an effective appeal in her current circumstances but it does not follow that her appeal succeeds.”

Maya Foa, director of the human rights group Reprieve, said: “The court today found that the detention conditions of British nationals in north-east Syria constitute torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. It is rank hypocrisy for the government to abandon British families to torture, which it professes to categorically oppose. The only just solution is for the government to repatriate British families, and to try people in British courts if they have charges to answer”.

Clare Collier, advocacy director of the NGO Liberty, said: “The fact the government has left a young woman effectively stateless shows how little regard it holds for fundamental rights.

“Shamima Begum should not be banished—banishing people belongs in the dark ages, not 21st-century Britain. This case is just one example of how quickly ministers use citizenship-stripping when they could use other powers.

“It’s clear why they use these archaic banishments and that is to score political points and look tough on terrorism. It has nothing to do with making the public safe.

“In fact, this leaves us less safe as services are unable to conduct proper investigations that could help prevent young people, like Shamima, from entering terrorist circles in the future.”

Writer and playwright Aina Khan warned that UK was setting a “dangerous precedent” by not allowing Begum to return.

In a article for the Guardian, she wrote: “Somehow this child [Begum was 15 when she left for Syria] was groomed and radicalised, not in some far-away country bereft of democracy, but here on British soil…. Before condemning her we need to know how this naïve teenager was pushed in this direction. If she’d been sexually groomed at this age we would not be vilifying the victim.”

Khan asserted that Begum was “a product of Britain, not of Bangladesh—a country she has never visited”, and she “should be tried on British soil”.