The Daily Star
Monday July 20 2020
By Michael Glackin
Shamima Begum, London born, but currently a resident of Al-Roj refugee camp in north east Syria, is said to be delighted but also "very nervous" about her potential return to the UK after a four year absence.
It's fair to say her delight is not shared by too many others in the UK, though like her, many are nervous about it.
In case you missed it, Begum, once the hip poster girl for so called "Jihadi Brides", was reacting to the decision by a UK court that she should be allowed to return to the UK to launch an appeal against the removal of her British citizenship.
The decision has caused outrage. Conservative Party parliamentarian Andrew Bridgen said: "Most Brits will rightly think that when you swear allegiance to another country that declares war on Britain, that you have given up all the rights and protections and privileges of your British citizenship. After this ruling it appears you have not."
Public anger at the court's decision was hardly helped by Begum's lawyer, Tasnime Akunje, who during a television interview last week said he couldn't be sure she wouldn't pose a terror threat to the UK.
In case you have forgotten, Begum, now 20, was 15 when she ran away from her east London home with two school friends to join Daesh in 2015, boarding a flight to Turkey then making her way to Syria. Once there, she was soon married a jihadi fighter and spent the next three years in terrorist-controlled territory.
In 2019, after the defeat of Daesh, she was found by The Times of London in Al-Hawl refugee camp. She told the newspaper that she had no regrets, admitted to being well aware of the atrocities Daesh carried out during its reign of terror, and wasn't troubled by them.
"When I saw my first severed head in a bin it didn't faze me at all. It was from a captured fighter seized on the battlefield, an enemy of Islam," she explained. She quickly moderated her views in subsequent interviews, but the then-UK home secretary, Sajid Javid, stripped her of British citizenship on national security grounds, effectively making her stateless.
Begum was denied permission to fly back to the UK to appeal Javid's decision. But that changed with last week's Court of Appeal ruling. The Court of Appeal concluded 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."
Priti Patel, the UK's combative home secretary (the minister in charge of law and order), has said the government will appeal the ruling to the UK Supreme Court and prevent Begum's return until it makes a decision.
Patel's department has been criticized for its decision to appeal, but the reality is it had little choice. If Begum is allowed back it opens the floodgates to dozens of other Daesh extremists that have been stripped of UK citizenship to return. Indeed, similar legal actions from families of others languishing in Syrian refugee camps are being launched as we speak.
In the event Begum returns to the UK for her court appeal, she will be arrested and charged with terror-related offenses. After that, there are only two outcomes. She will either win and be handed back her British passport and do jail time, or lose and face deportation.
But to where? No one wants her.
The Kurdish authorities currently holding Begum have repeatedly called for the UK to take her back. When the UK removed her citizenship, it argued that under Bangladeshi law, Begum, whose parents are from the country, was a citizen of Bangladesh by descent so would not be stateless.
Needless to say, Bangladesh didn't want her. Indeed, the country's foreign minister, Abdul Momen, said last year that Begum had "nothing to do" with Bangladesh. Hence Patel's determination to keep here where she is.
However, Begum is the UK's responsibility. She was born in the UK, educated here, radicalized here, and spectacularly failed by our police and government.
Begum's family claims she was radicalized through online grooming and that the authorities were aware this was happening. The school Begum attended in London was, shall we say, "well known to the police." Indeed, after one of her school friends had run away and joined Daesh, Begum was interviewed by the UK's counter-terrorism police without the knowledge of her parents. She and the two girls she absconded with, both of whom are now believed to be dead, were even given letters by the police to take home to their parents which needless to say the girls promptly destroyed without their parents ever reading them.
Begum is a UK problem, not one that should be outsourced to another country, even if one could be found for her.
Moreover, stripping Begum of her UK nationality on the basis of her heritage sets a dangerous precedent.
The government's argument suggests, indeed makes plain, that if you are the UK-born child of immigrants, your citizenship is flimsy, a nickel and dime version of citizenship. On that basis, if Patel if ever fell foul of the law, she could end up in Uganda, the country where her parents were born. It is hard not to conclude that what the government is saying is that the children of immigrants, like Patel and at least three of her cabinet colleagues, are actually only "UK lite."
In an increasingly polarized UK, that message has clear appeal to the mob, but it diminishes all that the UK purports to stand for.
Begum must now account for her actions, and that is best served by ensuring she stands trial for her crimes in a UK court. Begum could be jailed for up to 10 years for being a member or supporting Daesh. Security sources have indicated Begum was a member of Al-Hisba, Daesh's morality police, and allegedly "stitched suicide bombers into explosive vests." If that is proven she could face a life sentence.
As I wrote on these pages when Begum first emerged from the ruins of Daesh's collapsed caliphate in early 2019, returning her to the UK, putting her on trial for whatever crimes she has committed and rehabilitating her would perhaps turn her into a poster girl for the values the UK holds dear, and show the true strengths of democracy and liberalism over the death cult she and others embraced.
That remains true today. Let Begum, and more importantly, the victims of her actions, see justice done.
Michael Glackin is a UK-based journalist and a former managing editor of The Daily Star.
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