Shamima Begum

Although court found there was 'credible suspicion' that she was trafficked for sexual exploitation as a child, it was not enough for her to win her appeal.

Every possible avenue to challenge this decision will be urgently pursued.” Ms Begum remains in unlawful, arbitrary and indefinite detention without trial in a Syrian camp. Money from shares contributes directly to keep our paper thriving. However the judge added that the commission was concerned by the security services’ “apparent downplaying of the significance of radicalisation and grooming, in stating that what happened to Ms Begum is not unusual.” “But the real point here is that, in the light of Begum, this is exactly the sort of issue that lies within the judgement of the Secretary of State and not the commission.” In its judgement, the commission concludes that there was credible suspicion that Ms Begum was trafficked to Syria for the purposes of sexual exploitation as a child.

A British-born woman, who went to Syria as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State, lost her latest appeal against the removal of her British citizenship, ...

Britain has called her a threat to national security, but she maintains she was groomed and lured by Islamic State recruiters when she was a child.

Joshua Baker, the journalist behind the podcast and documentary, interviewed Begum over a span of two years at a sprawling tent camp in northern Syria. For its part, Bangladesh has said she is not a citizen and has never set foot in that country. “She will be very disappointed,” he said of Begum. Last week, it stripped 94 people of their citizenship, and measures are underway to do the same to more than 200 others. officials have urged nations to repatriate their citizens, arguing that they represent a [greater threat](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/islaimc-state-prisoners-repatriation/2021/10/15/f8e722b2-2a91-11ec-92bd-d2ffe8570c7d_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_11) if left in dire conditions in displacement camps. [40,000 foreigners](https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/15/syria-repatriations-lag-foreigners-alleged-isis-ties) from some 60 countries who have been accused of having links with the Islamic State are in camps and prisons in northeastern Syria, according to Human Rights Watch. She was 15, and he was 21. is content to abandon most of its nationals to indefinite, unlawful detention in hellish conditions inside a war zone.” According to Tayler, 11 British citizens have been repatriated from Syria, and at least 60 others are believed to remain in the country. [revoked her citizenship](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/02/26/shemima-begum-supreme-court-uk-syria-return/?itid=lk_inline_manual_5). Britain “has turned into an outlier on repatriations from northeast Syria,” Letta Tayler, a global terrorism researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in an email. [Former ISIS teenage bride who left Britain to join militant group in Syria tells the public: ‘I’m sorry’](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/16/shamima-begum-gmb-interview-isis/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_6) [revocation of her citizenship](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/shamima-begum-teenager-who-joined-isis-to-lose-uk-citizenship/2019/02/20/3b02feec-3511-11e9-8375-e3dcf6b68558_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_16) left her stateless and that she was a victim of trafficking.

The government peddles a caricature so we don't see her for what she is: a child trafficking victim groomed in the UK, says Maya Foa, director of the legal ...

[Shamima Begum](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/shamima-begum) – something British courts are eminently capable of doing if one day the Crown Prosecution Service decides there is a case to answer – we should judge the government’s failure to take responsibility. Each time one of our allies brings its nationals home, it shows up the UK government’s policy for what it really is: a political posture. There is a growing consensus that the UK’s refusal to repatriate is a failed policy, bad for national and global security. [unlawfully detained without trial](https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/feb/10/british-women-and-children-detained-in-syria-failed-by-uk-government-inquiry-finds) in north-east Syria. Reprieve’s research [has shown](https://reprieve.org/uk/2021/04/30/trafficked-to-syria/) that the majority of the women were trafficked by IS, some when they were children. Rather than acknowledge this, or even engage with the debate, the government would rather focus on a caricature of Begum. Despite finding that she was probably groomed and trafficked by Islamic State (IS) at the age of 15, the commission reluctantly found that it could not grant her appeal. Today the commission agreed. This is bunk, a political posture in the absence of a policy. Most of the adults have been stripped of citizenship. [Syria](https://www.theguardian.com/world/syria) by herself; that there is credible suspicion she was trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation; and that UK institutions are likely to have failed in their duty to protect her. The judges accepted that “as a matter of basic common sense” Begum was groomed in the UK; that it was not plausible that she could have organised her travel to

The 23-year-old loses her appeal on national security grounds and means she cannot return to the UK.

Mr Javid also welcomed the ruling. This isn't the first time a legal challenge by Ms Begum's lawyers has failed. A spokesman for the Home Office said it was "pleased" with the outcome, adding: "The government's priority remains maintaining the safety and security of the UK and we will robustly defend any decision made in doing so." "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," said the judge. "The commission concluded that there was a credible suspicion that Ms Begum had been trafficked to Syria," he said in his summary. Shamima Begum has lost her challenge over the decision to deprive her of British citizenship despite a "credible" case she was trafficked.

As Shamima Begum's appeal is rejected, one writer recalls the time she spent in a Syrian detention camp with Begum and Hoda Muthana who ran away to join ...

And although Hoda was born and raised in America, the US government disputes that she was ever actually a citizen. She worked in the camp and tried to help other women like Shamima and Hoda who had left ISIS. She told me she knows Shamima and Hoda well and was adamant that they should be given the opportunity to return home. She talked about how the group targeted and groomed “younger women who were vulnerable and didn’t know the religion well themselves” and about the problems she was having in the US at the time, alleging that she was facing abuse. When I questioned the camp authorities on the graveyard, they acknowledged it is a “problem” and said they’re currently trying to find more space for a “new graveyard.” At the time, she was about to embark on her biggest court challenge yet, in which she appealed the legality of the government's decision to remove her citizenship. Hoda and Shamima seemed like genuine friends and I was pleased when they said they were happy to show me their lives in the camp. Most adults have also been stripped of their citizenship, and of those, most of the women were found to have been trafficked, and trafficked as children too. And the threat of ISIS was why I was so worried about the trip. I put in an official request to meet some of the women there, then all I had to do was wait. I made it clear that I was there to hear their side of the story. She was 20 when she left the United States to travel to Syria and join ISIS.

Begum, whose nationality was stripped after she travelled to Syria to join ISIL (ISIS), continues to fuel debate.

Canada and the UK declined to comment on the allegations, as is routine for security issues involving intelligence agencies. “You are a British/Bangladeshi dual national who, it is assessed, has previously travelled to Syria and aligned with ISIL. It can be removed by the Secretary of State, but not if to do so would render the subject stateless”. “I have one citizenship … Begum will have to take the case directly to the Court of Appeal in London if she wishes to challenge the decision, according to legislation that covers the tribunal. However, the case was taken to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2021 that while Begum has a right to challenge the decision, she should do so from outside the UK due to “security concerns”. It is assessed that your return to the UK would present a risk to the national security of the United Kingdom,” a letter sent to her family in 2019 by the Secretary of State’s Private Office [denied this](/news/2019/2/21/shamima-begum-is-british-has-no-claim-to-bangladesh-minister) and said she would not be allowed in the country. [newspaper in 2019](/news/2019/2/14/uk-schoolgirl-who-ran-away-to-join-isil-wants-to-come-home), Begum said she was tired of life on the battlefield and feared for her unborn child. Citizenship is a legal status that “means a person has a right to live in a state and that state cannot refuse them entry or deport them”, according to the Migration Observatory of the University of Oxford. The British government stripped Begum of her citizenship in 2019, shortly after she was found in a detention camp in Syria. [lost her latest appeal](/news/2023/2/22/shamima-begum-sees-uk-citizenship-appeal-rejected) against the removal of her citizenship.

Shamima Begum has lost her legal battle with British Government, with regard to her links with Islamic State (ISIS).

The views expressed here are that of the respective authors/ entities and do not represent the views of Economic Times (ET). In the ITV News footage, Ms. While Shamima Begum has expressed her belief that her friend is still alive, Ms. It was at that same age that she, along with 16-year-old [Kadiza Sultana](/topic/kadiza-sultana)and 15-year-old [Amira Abase](/topic/amira-abase), left the UK. Abase had left the UK. Sultana claimed to be a housewife, while intelligence sources alleged that she was involved in stitching explosives into suicide vests. The carnage from twin suicide bombings at Kabul airport will fuel fears that a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan could prove an increasingly powerful magnet for terror groups like Islamic State. On February 11, a court dismissed the argument that the British government had unlawfully revoked Shamima Begum's citizenship. All three girls were married to members of the Islamic State group, but their paths diverged from there. Abase maintained contact with her mother through social media. Here's a closer look at what has happened to Amira Abase and Kadiza In the same year, the trio joined the Islamic State group, and since then, Shamima Begum has gained significant media attention for her efforts to reclaim her British citizenship and come back to the UK.

Issues related to national security have always been hard to crack, but judges are unwilling to consider human rights, says barrister Conor Gearty.

This has gone beyond national security to embrace economic and social matters, even where discrimination in the enjoyment of individual rights can be plausibly argued. The current supreme court seems to hanker after a past in which judges mainly adjudicated on civil matters and had next to nothing to say about public law. Reflecting that earlier judgment, we see a determination to defer to the widest possible extent to government on the grounds of national security, as well as a lack of any moral urgency in relation to the alleged breaches of Begum’s core human rights. But none of that meant that the secretary of state could not choose to take her citizenship away and then deny her the right to argue against this decision in person. And equally, while the idea that she had travelled entirely voluntarily to Syria, as the secretary of state asserted, might be hard for many to accept, including perhaps even the commission, once again, so what? The Human Rights Act survives in law, it is true – but what of its spirit?

Labour leader Keir Starmer on Thursday said he supported a court ruling dismissing an appeal by Shamima Begum challenging the UK government over the removal of ...

To learn more about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill out this I support that decision and as I say, national security has to come first." "National security has to come first. "I don't think [Shamima Begum] should be welcome on our streets. Begum's lawyers, Birnberg Peirce and Partners, criticised SIAC's decision and said concerns raised by the commission of the UK Supreme Court's decision to give "deference" to the Home Secretary on national security issues was alarming. "During the court hearing, the court was privy to information that the rest of us haven't seen - from the security services - who believe that we would not be safe if that decision made by the previous home secretary was reversed and we support that."