22-02-23, 16:19
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Re: ISIS Wife Begum Cant Return to UK After Losing British Citizenship
Ex-ISIS Member Shamima Begum Cannot Return to UK After Losing Battle For Citizenship....
Shamima Begum cannot come back to the UK after the court decision meant she has lost her battle for British citizenship eight years after she joined ISIS
BBC 22 FEB 2023
Shamima Begum shortly after she was found in the camps in 2019
Shamima Begum has lost her battle for British citizenship — eight years after she left the UK as a 15-year-old schoolgirl to join Islamic State (ISIS).
Begum, who left east London aged 15 to join the Islamic State, had been challenging the decision taken by the then-home secretary, Sajid Javid, in 2019 to strip her of her British citizenship.
Today, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) decided this decision was lawful and ruled that the suspicion she had been trafficked to Syria was insufficient for her to succeed in the appeal.
The judge, Mr Justice Jay, found that there was a “credible suspicion” she was a victim of trafficking, however, Mr Jay concluded that the Home Secretary was not formally required to consider this when he removed her citizenship.
Riedijk fathered three children with Begum, all of whom died
Mr Jay also said the Secretary of State’s conclusion that she travelled voluntarily to Syria was "as stark as it is unsympathetic."
Begum's lawyer has said it’s far from over and will be challenging the judgement. Their statement read: "Regrettably, this is a lost opportunity to put into reverse a profound mistake and a continuing injustice."
Begum married the notoriously hardline IS member Dutch national Yago Riedijk, 27, aged just 15 and had three children with him who all later died.
She was found by a British journalist in a refugee camp in 2019, after IS lost the ground war in Syria, thus making the government aware she was still alive.
Begum's British citizenship was then stripped and she was banned from entering Britain following being deemed a threat to the nation — she has been fighting to return to the UK ever since.
Bahrain and Nicaragua (very recently) are the only countries other than the UK that strip citizenship in bulk. Since 2000, the UK has deprived at least 212 people of citizenship: more than ten times as many as France or Australia.
In 2020, the Court of Appeal gave her permission to return to the UK to appeal her revoked citizenship. Then in 2021, the Supreme Court overturned this, finding national security fears outweighed right to an effective hearing.
Giving the decision of the tribunal, Mr Justice Jay said today that "reasonable people will differ" over the circumstances of Begum's case and 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.
Begum and her two friends were not stopped by the police, school and local authority and the commission said that that there were state failures and possible violations of the [state’s] corollary protective duty, between December 2014 and February 2015, which could be investigated.
Shamima Begum in the BBC documentary
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