Shamima Begum will not be able to come back to the UK after losing a legal challenge over the decision to deprive her of her British citizenship. The court decision was made eight years after she left east London as a 15-year-old schoolgirl to join Islamic State (ISIS).
After she was found - nine months pregnant - in February 2019 at a Syrian refugee camp, her British citizenship was revoked. Now 23-years-old, Ms Begum brought a challenge against the Home Office over this decision at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) - a specialist tribunal which hears challenges to decisions to remove someone’s British citizenship on national security grounds.
Today (Feb 22), following a five-day hearing in November, the tribunal dismissed her challenge. Ms Begum’s barristers, Samantha Knights KC and Dan Squires KC, said at the time of the hearing that she was “recruited, transported, transferred, harboured and received in Syria for the purposes of ‘sexual exploitation’ and ‘marriage’ to an adult male”.
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They also argued that the Home Office unlawfully failed to consider that she travelled to Syria and remained there “as a victim of child trafficking”. However, Sir James Eadie KC, for the department, said the security services “continue to assess that Ms Begum poses a risk to national security”.
Sir James later said then-home secretary Sajid Javid took into account Ms Begum’s age, how she travelled to Syria – including likely online radicalisation – and her activity in the country, when deciding to remove her British citizenship.
The 23-year-old left her home in east London in 2015 with two school friends to travel to Syria and join the so-called Islamic State caliphate. She married the notoriously hardline IS member and 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 ISIS lost the ground war in Syria, which made the government aware she was still alive. Giving the decision of the tribunal, Mr Justice Jay said that “reasonable people will differ” over the circumstances of Shamima Begum’s case.
He said: “The commission has fully recognised the considerable force in the submissions advanced on behalf of Ms Begum that the Secretary of State’s conclusion, on expert advice, that Ms Begum travelled voluntarily to Syria is as stark as it is unsympathetic. 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.”
He continued: “If asked to evaluate all the circumstances of Ms Begum’s case, reasonable people with knowledge of all the relevant evidence will differ, in particular in relation to the issue of the extent to which her travel to Syria was voluntary and the weight to be given to that factor in the context of all others.
“Likewise, reasonable people will differ as to the threat she posed in February 2019 to the national security of the United Kingdom, and as to how that threat should be balanced against all countervailing considerations. However, under our constitutional settlement these sensitive issues are for the Secretary of State to evaluate and not for the commission.”
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