Shamima Begum should be allowed to return to the UK to rebuild her life, her mother-in-law has said. Ms Begum is banned from coming back to Britain and has been stripped of her citizenship after she travelled to the Islamic State in Syria in 2015.
But Ankie Riedijk, the mother of Ms Begum's Dutch husband Yago Riedijk, says she should be granted permission to come back. Ms Begum is challenging the Government in a bid to have her citizenship reinstated.
Mr Riedijk married Ms Begum when he was 23 and she was 15, days after she arrived in Syria. They had three children together, all of whom died. The pair are still legally married but have not seen one another since ISIS lost the ground war in Syria in 2019, The Mirror reports.
Mrs Riedijk told the Daily Mail: "I am convinced that Shamima should be allowed to go home and build her life there."
The Mail said Mrs Riedijk believes Shamima, and her son Yago, should be allowed home "where they should be judged for their actions". It said she seemed to suggest "that governments need to take responsibility for their own radicalised young citizens rather than leave them in a stateless limbo."
ISIS seized large swathes of land in Iraq and Syria where they established a caliphate with strict Sharia law. They committed genocide against the Yazidi religious group in Iraq and brutal beheadings and televised executions of western journalists and aid workers were commonplace.
Ms Begum currently lives in a Kurdish-run camp in northeast Syria. In a BBC documentary that aired last week, Ms Begum said she does not want to be with her husband.
Mr Riedijk, now 31, admitted to fighting for the Islamic State, but said he has since rejected the group. He was suspected by police of being involved in a terrorist plot in the Netherlands and was convicted in his absence in 2018 of membership of a terrorist group.
He is currently being held in a Kurdish detention centre in north-eastern Syria. He faces a six-year jail term for joining a terror organisation if he returns to the Netherlands.
