Shamima Begum and other British women who join the Islamic State should be allowed to return home, the government’s reviewer of terror legislation was expected to say on Monday.
Jonathan Hall KC was set to give a speech at King’s College London just days after Ms Begum lost her legal battle to return to the UK.
Judges at the special immigration appeals commission said there was “credible suspicion” she, then aged 15, and two other London school girls were trafficking victims when they joined the Islamic State in 2015, but it does not affect the government’s decision to remove her citizenship on national security grounds.
But Hall KC was expected to argue that British or formerly British women should have the right to return from Syria, which would bring the UK in line with the position in the United States.
Hall KC, who was appointed as Independent Review of Terrorism Legislation in 2019, was expected to say that the UK is “at a crossroads”, the Times reports, as it comes under pressure from allies including the US to bring them home.
The US has repatriated dozens of Americans and the Biden administration has said the camps in Syria threaten western security.
Hall KC was set to acknowledge MI5 fears about the risk that British IS members pose but will point to how they are currently left in limbo in camps in Syria.
He was expected to say that women are less likely to have travelled for the purpose of fighting and may have less autonomy in being able to leave Syria, the Times reports, but now make up the majority of detained people linked to the UK.
The power to revoke citizenship was extended by the Immigration Act in 2014 and can only be used in cases where a person has “conducted” themselves “in a manner which is seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK” and where the secretary of state has “reasonable grounds for believing that the person is able, under the law of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom, to become a national of such country or territory”.
But ministers are under pressure to accept the return of foreign fighters and other IS supporters held in Kurdish-controlled territory in Syria after the defeat of the terror group.
Ms Begum married and later had three children, all of whom have died. She emerged back into public view four years later in February 2019 after the defeat of IS in Syria forced her and thousands other of the extremist group’s followers to flee into a Kurdish controlled part of the country, where she remains in a detention camp run by the Kurds.
Following the outcome of Ms Begum’s case, a Home Office spokesperson said: “The Government’s priority remains maintaining the safety and security of the UK and we will robustly defend any decision made in doing so.”
