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Labour can’t seem to decide whether terrorism is okay or not

On Monday 9 December, a cabinet minster confirmed there are no plans to let Shamima Begum return to the UK. Meanwhile, the government is re-assessing the terror group of Abu Mohammed al Jolani, former member of al Qaeda:

Shamima Begum was trafficked from the UK aged 15 to marry an ISIS fighter. Now, she finds herself stranded in a Syrian Refugee camp, surrounded by chaos after terrorist group HTS ousted Bashar al-Assad.

One rule for them, another for Shamima Begum

During Sky News’s reporting, they labelled Abu Mohammed al Jolani as a ‘rebel leader’. Both the US and Russia have labelled him a terrorist, and the US still has a $10m bounty on his head. He was fundamental in Hayat Tahrir al Sham’s (HTS) offensive which toppled the dictatorship in Syria.

HTS, previously known as the Nusra Front, is a former wing of al Qaeda, and before that the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) – and also briefly ISIS itself. Estimates suggest they have around 3,000 troops. Yet the UK government has said it could remove HTS from its list of banned terror organisations.

Al Jolani has spent years trying to distance himself from al Qaeda and his hardcore jihadi extremist views. He claims to now embrace ‘pluralism and tolerance’:

So why are the western media presenting Al Jolani as ‘reformed’ when he is a literal terrorist? Meanwhile, the UK government are leaving Shamima Begum to rot in a refugee camp – a girl that left the UK as a 15-year-old to marry an adult ISIS fighter:

State failings

When Shamima Begum left the UK, a man named Mohammed al-Rashed met het at an Istanbul bus station. Since then, British police have admitted that he was acting as an informant for Canada’s CSIS spy agency:

It was also acknowledged that her school, Tower Hamlets council, and the Met Police all failed and therefore effectively contributed to Begum’s trafficking. Despite this, the UK government are still classing her as a terrorist and stopping her from returning to the UK:

Maybe if Shamima Begum leads a coup, the UK might let her back in?

According to the UK government – ‘our enemy’s enemy is our friend’. That is of course, unless they’re a Brown woman, then fuck them.

The UK’s Tory government were nothing short of callous and racist for stripping her of her citizenship, effectively making her stateless.

Now, the Labour Party government saying they’ll reassess an organisation that’s rife with human rights abuses, purely because it’s politically convenient, is nothing short of hypocritical. Refusing to reconsider her citizenship because she joined a terrorist organisation as a child – thanks to a Canadian asset grooming her – is truly disgusting.

Feature image via the Canary

By HG

This post was originally published on Canary.