I have a strong belief in human rights being universal and the UK adhering to these principles. When Ms Begum was stripped of her birthright British nationality she was not a citizen of Bangladesh, which stated that it would not accept her request for citizenship, ergo she was made arbitrarily stateless, contrary to international law. The progress of her case through the UK courts will surely end at the human rights courts, where the UK will lose.
Background to the legal battle as the court of appeal decides whether removal of her UK citizenship was unlawful
The court of appeal’s decision due on Friday on whether Shamima Begum, who travelled to Syria to join Islamic State as a child, was unlawfully stripped of her UK citizenship is the latest step in a long-running battle she has fought against the government. Here is the history of the case and why it has attracted so much publicity.
However, human rights group says UK lagging behind other western nations in repatriating families who lived under IS
Britain has agreed to repatriate a woman and five children from camps in Syria, the second time the UK has allowed an adult to return since the end of the ground war against Islamic State more than four years ago.
The release was announced by the Kurdish administration that controls north-east Syria – but a human rights group and a former minister accused the UK of lagging behind other western nations in allowing families who lived under IS to return.
Former supreme court justice Jonathan Sumption on last week’s ruling on the home secretary’s decision to deprive Begum of her citizenship. Plus letters from Ilina Todorovska, Owen Stewart, Andrew Snowdon and Carmel Bedford
Prof Conor Gearty complains about the special immigration appeals commission’s “deference” to the government in its judgment on Shamima Begum (Shamima Begum has shown up courts’ deference to this government. It’s a worrying new era, 23 February). Decisions on deprivation of citizenship are required by statute to be made by the home secretary. The commission’s job was therefore to decide whether the home secretary’s decision was properly made, not whether it agreed with it. That is what it did. In a democracy governed by the rule of law, Prof Gearty should not have been surprised.
Meanwhile, his analysis distracts attention from the real scandal. By statute, the home secretary cannot deprive a person of British citizenship if it would render them stateless. The person must have citizenship of at least one other country. When the decision was made, in 2019, Ms Begum was 19. She was a citizen of Bangladesh, but only in the most technical sense. She had provisional citizenship until she was 21, when it would lapse unless she took it up. This was because her parents were born there. But she has never been to Bangladesh. She has no links with the country. And Bangladesh has disowned her. Her Bangladeshi citizenship always was a legal fiction. Today, it is not even that. She is 23. As a result of the home secretary’s decision, she is stuck in a camp in Syria, with no citizenship anywhere and no prospect of one. Children who make a terrible mistake are surely redeemable. But statelessness is for ever.
Issues related to national security have always been hard to crack, but judges are unwilling to consider human rights
Are the courts reverting to type? Until quite recently, it was widely assumed that the last people to look to for protection from the state were the judges. The Irish knew this, so too did union officials, leftwing campaigners and civil libertarian activists. Progress on racial and gender equality was achieved despite judges, not because of them.
Then along came the 1998 Human Rights Act and the flourishing of a new generation of abrasively liberal judges, men and women not afraid to impose their will on the executive where the law demanded it, undaunted by “enemy of the people” jibes. The Human Rights Act survives in law, it is true – but what of its spirit?
Shamima Begum has lost her latest legal battle to reverse the decision that stripped her of her British citizenship. The ruling from Judge Robert Jay of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) means that she can’t return to the UK from her current home in a refugee camp in northern Syria.
Shamima was 15 when Islamic State (IS) groomed her to leave her East London home for Syria. This was in 2015. While she was there, the group forced her to marry an IS fighter. She had three children, who have all since died. In February 2019, her legal team said the UK government left her stateless. This was after the then-home secretary Sajid Javid revoked her British citizenship. He claimed this was on ‘national security grounds’ after she was found in the Syrian camp.
A UK tribunal ruled in 2020 that she was not stateless. It claimed this was because she was “a citizen of Bangladesh by descent” at the time the decision was made. This was due to her mother being Bangladeshi. Javid revoked Shamima’s citizenship despite the fact she had never been to Bangladesh. Under the Bangladeshi “blood line” law, nationality and citizenship lapse when a person reaches the age of 21. This is triggered unless they make efforts to retain it. Shamima has not done this, and was aged 19 when the decision was made.
Shamima Begum’s ‘shades of grey’
When rejecting her appeal, Jay said:
under our constitutional settlement these sensitive issues are for the secretary of state to evaluate and not for the commission.
However, he said there was “considerable force” in Begum’s arguments. Jay also noted that Javid’s conclusion that she had travelled voluntarily to Syria “is as stark as it is unsympathetic”.
Jay continued:
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.
This presumably refers to Shamima’s account that IS groomed, raped, and abused her. Given that she was 15 when the group trafficked her, she clearly could not consent to any sexual contact. It is evidently the UK government’s position that Shamima was – and remains – a security threat who joined IS and cannot be allowed into the UK. Instead it appears that the “shades of grey” Jay refers to are a sickening euphemism for the abuse and trafficking of a young girl.
Indeed, lawyer Samantha Knights, representing Shamima, told the SIAC hearing last November that her client had been “influenced” along with her friends by a “determined and effective” IS group “propaganda machine”. She said in written evidence there was “overwhelming” evidence Shamima had been:
recruited, transported, transferred, harboured and received in Syria for the purposes of ‘sexual exploitation’ and ‘marriage’ to an adult male.
Gareth Peirce and Daniel Furner, lawyers representing Shamima, said the ruling meant:
there is now no protection for a British child trafficked out of the UK.
They confirmed that “every possible avenue to challenge this decision will be urgently pursued”. Shamima can now appeal the decision by the SIAC in the Court of Appeal.
Reactions to the stripping of citizenship
Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director Steve Valdez-Symonds said:
The power to banish a citizen like this simply shouldn’t exist in the modern world.
Shamima Begum had lived all her life in the UK right up to the point she was lured to Syria as an impressionable 15-year-old.
Activist and writer Ilyas Nagdee said:
Shamima Begum has lost her appeal and remains stateless. A ruling that at its heart abandons a young woman, who was victim of serious exploitation as a young teenager to statelessness. An abdication of responsibility by a state using a policy of deprivation that shouldn't exist.
Co-editor of Red Pepper Magazine Amardeep Dhillon said:
Shamima Begum’s loss of appeal is a gross miscarriage of justice against a girl who was groomed and traumatised, and a warning sign that the citizenship of diaspora groups is contingent on avoiding criminalisation. The mainstream media is complicit in this harm.
Academic Gurminder Bhambra pointed out the cost to all of us:
Once any government begins to remove rights from its citizens, those rights, for the rest of the population, are no longer rights, but privileges. Privileges given (and taken away) at the whim of arbitrary power.
Dr Zubaida Haque explained that the decision is likely to have severe implications for British citizens with lineage from other countries:
Shamima Begum was born in the UK. She was raised here. She never visited Bangladesh. She lost her British citizenship on the basis that she was also a Bangladeshi national. She wasn't. SIAC's decision means that for most of us our citizenship is NOT secure https://t.co/jDJwWhjfzI
Shamima has been here many times. Each time her legal battles are covered by the mainstream media, racists come crawling out of the woodwork. They deny she was ever trafficked or abused. They use her as an example of the threat of ‘Islamist extremism.’ It’s not at all surprising that the government are doggedly opposing her attempts to avoid statelessness. These are the same people who’ve enacted the Nationality and Borders Act which enshrines the ability to strip people of their citizenship into law.
Shamima’s treatment at the hands of a hostile government and a craven media says absolutely everything about what kind of country the UK is. This is a place where a child who was trafficked, raped, and abused, whose three children all died, can be left stateless and shoved towards a country she has never known, simply because of where her parents come from. This is what it’s like to not be white in Britain. It doesn’t matter who you are, who you know, how integrated you become, or anything like that. If you’re a person of colour, and Muslim on top of that, your citizenship can and will be stripped away from you.
Two years ago, when the Canary last covered Shamima’s citizenship battle, we concluded:
Conditional citizenship for some is conditional citizenship for all.
Being considered a person with full rights is for some, but not all. This rotting society is only as good as its most vulnerable people. What does that make the UK? A country that has unending sympathy and generosity of spirit for whiteness in all its guises, and a vicious disdain for brown people. To be brown and Muslim in the UK is to feel, on many levels, how much your life and death mean absolutely nothing.
Tribunal hears there were grounds to suspect the then 15-year-old had been groomed as a child bride
Police should have helped Shamima Begum return to Britain after she joined Islamic State in Syria because there were grounds to suspect she had been groomed as a child bride, a court has heard.
Samantha Knights KC told a tribunal that the police had an obligation to investigate whether Begum, who was 15 when she left the UK, was a victim of human trafficking, and then help her return if she was.
Lawyers for 23-year-old who left UK to join Islamic State in 2015 challenge ‘hasty’ decision to revoke citizenship
Shamima Begum, who left Britain as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State (IS) in Syria, was likely to have been the victim of child trafficking and sexual exploitation, a court has heard.
Lawyers acting for the 23-year-old began a new appeal on Monday against the removal of her British citizenship at a hearing of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac).
The UK government has wholly failed in its duty towards her, say Flora Mackechnie and Nicola Bailey
It should never have come to alleged espionage for us to notice that what happened to the Bethnal Green trio has been covered up from the very beginning (Shamima Begum’s is a story of trafficking, betrayal and now, it seems, a state cover-up, 2 September). I have been confounded by the equanimity that met the government’s decision to revoke Shamima Begum’s citizenship and the supreme court’s bizarre ruling, which accepted that she had limited access to a fair trial while not seeing fit to allow her return to the UK.
Begum is the legal responsibility of the UK, and the rejection of this duty encapsulates the political abuse of the law and the unfathomable public acceptance of this. The irony of human rights is that they are popular on a superficial level, but where they are truly required, they are contentious and contradicted. If we make exceptions to rights for those who need them most, we simply do not have any rights.
In February 2015, three girls – Shamima Begum (15), Kadiza Sultana (16), and Amira Abase (15) – from South London made their way via Turkey to ISIS-controlled Syria. A story that emerged in March of that year was how the three were smuggled into Syria by a man who claimed he worked for the Canadian Security intelligence Service (CSIS). Moreover, there were claims that UK intelligence were aware of this dimension.
Now, with the publication of a book that examines some of those claims, there is revived interest.
There are still many unanswered questions – in particular about the alleged cover-up by UK police regarding the part played by the CSIS in human trafficking.
The original revelations
The Canadian intelligence angle received significantly less media coverage than other aspects of the story. There were, however, a few exceptions.
On 13 March 2015, an article by the Guardian referred to a Syrian man – but not by name – who helped the girls. It noted that he worked for Canadian intelligence.
Two days later the pro-Turkish governmentDaily Sabahpublished more details. This included the name of the man who conducted the trafficking operations as Mohammed al-Rashed.
According to Canadian media outlet CBC, Rashed was also known as Dr Mehmet Resit. Rashed claimed that he trafficked for ISIS in order that he could pass intelligence to Canada in exchange for Canadian citizenship.
A Reuters article quoted a Canadian government source in Ottawa, who said Rashed did not hold Canadian citizenship and “was not employed by CSIS”. According to CBC, a Turkish ‘intelligence report’ claimed there was evidence of texts Rashed had sent to officials working for Canadian intelligence.
Michel Juneau-Katsuyo, a former agent for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), told Canada’s iPolitics that Rashed may be a “human source” for the agency, noting that they are not considered employees of the CSIS.
Rashed’s trafficking of the three girls was seemingly not a one-off. Daily Sabah reported that:
based on information discovered on Rashed’s laptop computer, he helped 140 Britons travel to Syria to join ISIS apart from the three girls.
The Daily Sabah article included a video, filmed by the Turkish TV channel HBR (A Haber), of Rashed being arrested by Turkish authorities. There was also a video, covertly recorded by Rashed with the three girls at Gaziantep, of him helping them with their luggage and referring to the Syrian passports he would give them:
UK cover-up of Canada’s role
Daily Sabah reported that according to Turkish police Rashed’s handler worked out of the embassy in Amman and was referred to as “Matt”. It was also reported that Turkish police suspected “Matt” worked for British intelligence.
In a tweet on 31 August 2022, investigative researcher David Miller raised the matter of Rashed’s mysterious handler:
Was anyone else in the British state aware of the trafficking of under age girls (inc Shamima Begum) into Syria? In 2015 the Turkish police believed it "likely" the handler for the smuggler was a British intelligence officer working in the Canadian embassy in Jordan. https://t.co/pE19BXXgiWpic.twitter.com/KU6oAiyBDT
Miller’s tweet was posted in response to a tweet by the Begum family’s lawyer Tasnime Akunjee. He noted the claim that Met police officer Richard Walton, a former head of counter-terrorism, had been briefed by CSIS about their role in the trafficking of Begum.
A new book titled The Secret History of the Five Eyes by Richard Kerbaj (a security correspondent for the Sunday Times) published on 31 August claims the Met police’s counterterrorism branch was approached by the CSIS on this matter. Also, he claims that Canada asked the British to cover up its role in the trafficking operations.
As for Walton, The Canary previously reported that he was linked to the Special Demonstration Squad – now the subject of an inquiry into undercover policing.
Media catch-up
With the publication of the book by Kerbaj, the story has now attracted broader media coverage.
For example, on 1 September 2022 the BBC published an article on this via its website and via its regular news bulletins.
There was also a video, which mentions a podcast by Josh Baker on what happened to the three girls, in particular Begum. Baker added that a senior intelligence officer confirmed Rashed was providing intelligence to the CSIS:
As with the earlier 2015 reports, the BBCclaimed that Rashed, who is in jail in Turkey, was providing intelligence to Canada while at the same time trafficking people to ISIS. The BBC added that Rashed:
gathered information about IS, mapping the locations of the homes of Western IS fighters in Syria, identifying IP addresses and locations of internet cafes in IS-controlled territory, and taking screenshots of conversations he was having with IS fighters.
Investigation?
The role of the CSIS has been known since 2015, and this aspect was raised by Begum’s lawyer four years later when he wrote to then-home secretary Sajid Javid. Akunjee requested that the decision to revoke Begum’s citizenship be reversed.
#shamimabegum – Just a reminder that we wrote to @SajidJavid on the 29th May 2019 specifically pointing out the involvement of the Canadian Spy as an agent involved in the trafficking of Shamima. This letter was published in full in The Times :- https://t.co/B1JL3D2Fthpic.twitter.com/CsBdNntANl
Meanwhile, it’s reported that Canada will be conducting an investigation into the spy smuggling scandal. Whether that investigation extends beyond the role of the CSIS to examine a potential UK link to what happened is unlikely.
Questions
Ever since those 2015 reports, a number of unanswered questions remain.
In particular about the mysterious “Matt”, his connections with Rashed, and who he worked for. UK police tried – unsuccessfully – to warn the parents of all three girls of the danger of travelling to Syria. The girls were given letters from the police to give to their parents, but hid them. The families of the three girls have since accused the police of a catalogue of failures.
Begum is currently detained in a camp in north-east Syria. She gave birth to three children who have all since died. As for Sultana and Abase, their fate is unknown, though Sultana is believed to have died following an attack by the Russian air force in 2016.
Intelligence-gathering looks to have been prioritised over the lives of children.
Shamima and her two friends were vulnerable, trafficked, and subsequently sexually exploited. Had they been white and middle class, their fates would likely have been very different.
Collective failure
As can be seen, the three girls were failed by UK politicians, UK police, and border authorities, as well as by the intelligence services of possibly two countries. They were also failed by a media that did not suitably emphasise the role of intelligence services in this debacle. That collective failure has seen the death of at least one of the girls, to say nothing of the damage it’s caused to the lives of their families.
Britain has lauded its efforts to stop Isis and the grooming of our children by spending millions of pounds on the Prevent programme and online monitoring. However, at the very same time we have been co-operating with a western ally, trading sensitive intelligence with them whilst they have effectively been nabbing British children and trafficking them across the Syrian border for delivery to Isis all in the name of intelligence-gathering.
Former World Health Organisation director Anthony Costello summed it up in one tweet:
British by birth Shamima Begum was a 15yo child who was targeted, manipulated by a Canadian spy and trafficked to Syria. She suffered greatly and saw 3 of her infants die. The case to restore her citizenship and bring her home to a safe place is overwhelming. pic.twitter.com/EjRfoe6Ju5
In November, a hearing is to take place arguing that Begum’s citizenship should be restored. In addition, Akunjee has called for an inquiry into what UK intelligence services and the police knew.
Security and borders minister Damian Hinds says such action would only be taken against the most dangerous people, such as terrorists, extremists and serious organised criminals
It’s been possible for over a century. It comes with a right of appeal and is only used in exceptional circumstances in a small number of cases each year. The nationality and borders bill doesn’t change any of that – it’s only about how someone is notified.
Clause 9 in the nationality and borders bill will strike fear and uncertainty into the hearts of black and Asian Britons
At first glance, Shamima Begum and I don’t have much in common. She fled Britain when she was a schoolgirl to join Islamic State. I came to the UK from Sri Lanka in 2005 and qualified here as a public and human rights lawyer. I became a British citizen in 2015.
Begum was born in the UK as a British citizen on the basis of her parents’ immigration status. She was stripped of her citizenship using a controversial power introduced after the 2005 London bombings, which allows the government to remove British citizenship from dual nationals if doing so is “conducive to the public good”. The use of this power increased from 2010 and further increased in 2014.
Rights watchdog accuses Britain of turning a blind eye to degrading treatment of those who lived under IS
Britain is colluding in torture and degrading treatment by refusing to repatriate women and children held in indefinite detention in Syrian prison camps, according to a report from a human rights watchdog.
The assessment by Rights and Security International (RSI) accuses the UK and others of turning a blind eye to lawless and squalid conditions in two camps that contain 60,000 women and children, many held since the collapse of Islamic State.
Tribunal rules trio said to have travelled to Syria to join Isis were left stateless by Home Office decision
Three British-Bangladeshis said to have travelled to Syria to join Islamic State (Isis) have won a legal challenge against the stripping of their British citizenship after a tribunal ruled the move left them stateless.
Two women who were born in the UK, known only as C3 and C4, had their British citizenship removed in November 2019 on the grounds of national security.
Readers respond to the supreme court decision that Begum will not have her citizenship restored
Every day it seems the Guardian serves up another reason for being ashamed to be British. On Friday, it was the case of Shamima Begum (Shamima Begum loses fight to restore UK citizenship after supreme court ruling, 26 February). It makes it particularly difficult that I’m tutoring someone who is hoping to take an A-level in British politics. All the books list human rights and explain how carefully protected they are in our system. Article 5 is supposed to protect the right to liberty and freedom from arbitrary detention. Yet the supreme court is unable to protect Begum’s rights against a home secretary who is operating a policy based on pandering to public opinion in return for (hoped-for) votes.
We are told that legal protections are particularly important in difficult cases – that is, cases where an individual presents as unpleasant or undeserving. Begum was a teenager who took the extraordinary step of leaving her country to defend something she believed was deserving of her support. But even if she left with the firm intention of terrorising her fellow citizens, does this mean she should be deprived of her rights? It is a matter not of what Begum deserves but of what our national honour, and our constitution, deserve. This has been increasingly in doubt in recent years, with the government threatening to renege over the Northern Irish border agreement; not to mention the Chagos Islands and our participation in rendering citizens to be tortured during the “war on terror”. Jeremy Cushing Exeter
Britain risks creating “a new Guantánamo” in Syria by leaving Shamima Begum and others like her stranded in Syrian detention camps, it has been claimed, after the supreme court rejected Begum’s appeal against a decision to revoke her UK citizenship.
A key figure who has been involved with Begum’s case said the judgment left the 21-year-old in a legal limbo, unable to return to the UK or mount an effective challenge to the deprivation decision remotely.
The supreme court’s decision to allow this formerly British woman to be exiled does more harm to the public interest than bringing her back
Shamima Begum was born and brought up in London, as a British citizen. Six years ago, when she was 15, she and two other girls, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, left the UK to join Islamic State. Today, Ms Begum is the widowed mother of three dead children, imprisoned in the al-Roj camp in territory controlled by Syrian Kurds. On Friday, the UK supreme court reversed a decision by the court of appeal, judged that she is not entitled to have her British citizenship restored, and that she should not be allowed to return to the UK to fight her case in person.
These are wrong rulings. The UK is the correct place for an examination of this British-born woman’s mistakes or crimes, however horrific. By exiling her, as the court decided that the then home secretary, Sajid Javid, was entitled to do, the UK is ducking its international responsibilities. Ms Begum cannot properly instruct lawyers. The court held out the faint hope that a “fair hearing” could possibly take place at some future date. In the meantime, it is hard to see why other countries, or non-state actors such as the Syrian Kurds, should have to detain British fighters or their families (around 60 British adults and children remain in detention in Syria). For Britain to offload Ms Begum, on grounds that this would not make her stateless because her heritage entitles her to apply for citizenship of Bangladesh (where she has never been), is an abuse of position and of history.
Shamima Begum has failed to restore her British citizenship after the Supreme Court ruling that she’d lost her case.
21-year-old Begum was infamously groomed as a 15-year-old child. She was a minor when she entered Syria and also when she married an ISIS fighter. All three of her children have since died.
Begum was born in the UK. The government has cited her Bangladeshi heritage as proof of her claim to statehood in Bangladesh. However, Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has refused entry and citizenship for Begum.
Begum hasn’t been allowed to return to the UK over the course of the trial. According to the Guardian:
Lord Pannick QC, representing Begum, said [he] was unable to put her side of the case properly from al-Roj detention camp where she is held. He told the court she would be at risk of physical harm if she spoke by mobile phone to her British lawyers.
This latest ruling has sparked concerns of civil liberty and human rights.
Threat to democracy
The Canary reached out for comment to civil rights organisation Liberty. Liberty lawyer Rosie Brighouse said:
The right to a fair trial is not something democratic Governments should take away on a whim, and nor is someone’s British citizenship. If a Government is allowed to wield extreme powers like banishment without the basic safeguards of a fair trial it sets an extremely dangerous precedent.
The threat to democracy is apparent in this case, as Brighouse continued:
The security services have safely managed the returns of hundreds of people from Syria, but the Government has chosen to target Shamima Begum. This approach does not serve justice, it’s a cynical distraction from a failed counter-terror strategy and another example of this Government’s disregard for access to justice and the rule of law.
National security
The Canary also spoke to Muhammad Rubbani, managing director of advocacy organisation CAGE, who said:
The Home Office deliberately circumvents the right to a fair trial for those exiled and stripped of their citizenship by only doing so when they are not in the country. National security is used as a ruse to suspend long established legal norms.
Rubbani pointed to politically motivated decisions as the reason for Begum’s treatment:
The Supreme Court has not only upheld the Home Office’s politically motivated decision to deny a girl who was groomed as a child the right to return home but has provided cover for the deeply racist citizenship deprivation policy, and failed to address how the secret SIAC [Special Immigration Appeals Commission] fundamentally upend any semblance of a fair trial.
Concerns for the future
Several commenters also considered the implications of the case:
The implications of the Shamima Begum case for people — like myself — whose parents were born abroad and who are theoretically eligible for citizenship of those countries is so grim and disturbing. Are we lesser-class UK citizens because we are of immigrant descent? Apparently so
POC in this country know that if Shamima Begum can have her citizenship stripped away – a contradictory statement – then it can happen to anyone of us. This ruling has set an incredibly dangerous precedent for us and I hope people who are happy about the ruling realise this.
Labour councillor Shaista Aziz asked who was responsible for Begum:
A 15 year old school girl and her two friends from a high performing school in East London ended up running away to join a terrorist entity after being groomed online. How and why did this happen? How and why were these young girls failed by Britain? Begum is a British problem.
Others drew comparisons to cases that didn’t see defendants stripped of citizenship.
Even if you don't care about the way a 15 year old girl was groomed and exploited, you should care about allowing a state to break international law as they see fit
Because once that precedent is set, you are naïve if you think that it won't impact your life too.
Shamima Begum will find out if she can potentially return to the UK to pursue an appeal against the removal of her British citizenship when the Supreme Court gives a ruling on her case next week.
Stateless
Begum was 15 when she and two other east London schoolgirls travelled to Syria to join the so-called Islamic State group (IS) in February 2015. Her British citizenship was revoked on national security grounds shortly after she was found, nine months pregnant, in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019.
Begum, now 21, is challenging the Home Office’s decision to remove her British citizenship and wants to be allowed to return to the UK to pursue her appeal.
CCTV of the three schoolgirls leaving the UK (Met Police/PA)
In July last year, the Court of Appeal ruled that “the only way in which she can have a fair and effective appeal is to be permitted to come into the United Kingdom to pursue her appeal”.
The Home Office challenged that decision at the Supreme Court in November, arguing that allowing her to return to the UK “would create significant national security risks” and expose the public to “an increased risk of terrorism”.
The UK’s highest court will give a judgment on 26 February as to whether Begum should be granted leave to enter the UK to pursue her appeal against the deprivation of her British citizenship.
The Supreme Court will also rule on whether, if Begum is refused leave to enter the UK, her appeal against the removal of her British citizenship should be allowed.
The remote hearing was heard at the Supreme Court (Yui Mok/PA)
“Dire”
At the hearing in November, her lawyers said Begum was currently in the al-Roj camp in northern Syria, where conditions are “dire”. Lord Pannick QC told the court that the Syrian Democratic Forces, which control the al-Roj camp, “do not permit visits from lawyers nor do they permit detainees to speak to lawyers”.
He said the case against Begum was “no more than that she travelled to Syria and ‘aligned with IS’”, and that “it is not alleged that she fought, trained or participated in any terrorist activities, nor that she had any role within IS”.
Lord Pannick added that if Begum could not return to the UK to pursue an effective appeal “the deprivation appeal must be allowed”, as there is “no other fair or just step that can be taken”.
James Eadie QC, representing the Home Office, told the court:
If you force the Secretary of State to facilitate a return to the UK, or if you allow the substantive appeal, the effect is to create potentially very serious national security concerns.
He said of Begum:
She married an IS fighter, lived in Raqqa, the capital of the self-declared caliphate, and remained with them for about four years until 2019, when she left from, in effect, the last pocket of IS territory in Baghuz.
Eadie argued that individuals who went to Syria to join IS pose a “real and serious” risk to national security “whatever sympathy might be generated by the age of the person when they travelled”.
Kadiza Sultana, Shamima Begum and Amira Abase at Gatwick airport, before their flight to Turkey in February 2015 (Metropolitan Police/PA)
Syria
Begum and Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase, then 16 and 15 respectively, boarded a flight from Gatwick Airport to Istanbul, Turkey, on 17 February 2015, before making their way to Raqqa in Syria.
Begum claims she married Dutch convert Yago Riedijk 10 days after arriving in IS territory, with her school friends also reportedly marrying foreign IS fighters. She told the Times in February 2019 that she left Raqqa in January 2017 with her husband, but her children, a one-year-old girl and a three-month-old boy, had both since died.
Her third child died in the al-Roj camp in March 2019, shortly after he was born.
The Supreme Court’s decision will be announced at 9.45am on Friday 26 February.
(@mohammedakunjee) 
(@shaistaAziz) 
(@ifetalksback) 
