Shamima Begum, who joined IS, lost a legal battle to bring back UK CITIZEN | World news
A woman stripped of her British citizenship after traveling to Syria as a teenager to marry an Islamic State soldier on Wednesday lost her legal battle to overturn the decision.
The ruling from Judge Robert Jay means Shamima Begum, 23, cannot return to the UK from her current home in a refugee camp in northern Syria.
While the court decided the decision was for the government to make, it also said that some of Begum’s arguments were valid.
Begum was 15 when she left her home in east London for Syria with two school friends in 2015. While there, she married an IS fighter and had three children, none of whom that you understand.
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In February 2019, he was declared stateless when then British home secretary Sajid Javid revoked his British citizenship on national security grounds after he was found in a Syrian camp.
A UK court ruled in 2020 that he was not stateless because he was a “Bangladeshi citizen by descent” when the decision was made, by virtue of his Bangladeshi mother.
– ‘There is no protection’ –
The UK High Court last year refused Begum permission to enter the UK to fight her citizenship case. He then took his case to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), which ruled on Wednesday.
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In writing his plea, Jay said that “under our constitutional provision these sensitive cases are for the secretary of state to evaluate and not for the commission”.
There is, however, “significant force” in Begum’s arguments, he said.
Jay added that Javid’s decision that he had voluntarily traveled to Syria “is as sad as it gets.”
“Furthermore, there is some merit in the argument that those who are advising the secretary of state see this as a black and white issue, while many would say that there are shades of grey,” he added.
Gareth Peirce and Daniel Furner, lawyers representing Begum, said the ruling meant “there is now no protection for a British child trafficked out of the UK”.
They added that “all possible means to counter this decision will be pursued urgently”.
The Ministry of Interior said it was “happy that the court has found in favor of the government’s position”.
Begum can now appeal the decision by the Special Immigration Appeals Board at the Court of Appeal.
– Transfer rights –
The 23-year-old is one of hundreds of Europeans whose fate has been challenged by governments following the 2019 fall of the Islamist extremists’ self-styled caliphate.
Lawyer Samantha Knights, representing Begum, told a five-day SIAC hearing last November that her client had been “implicated” with his friends by the “determined and effective” IS group “propaganda machine”.
There is “compelling” evidence that he has been “collected, transferred, transferred, transferred and received in Syria for the purposes of “sexual intercourse” and “marriage” to an adult male, he added in written submissions.
James Eadie, representing the government, said Javid had “thoroughly considered” all the factors before making his decision. The case was about “national security”, not trafficking, he argued.
Amnesty International called the verdict “deeply disappointing”.
“The power to deport a citizen like this should not exist in today’s world,” said Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director Steve Valdez-Symonds.
“Shamima Begum has lived her entire life in the UK up until the point when she was unexpectedly drawn to Syria as a 15-year-old,” he added.
MP David Davis of the ruling Conservative Party and a former cabinet minister said the situation was a “shameful abdication of responsibility and must be rectified”.
“We are talking here about a young girl who was treated online and sold, and she is far from the only one in this situation.”
The UK government successfully argued that under Bangladeshi law, a UK citizen born to Bangladeshi parents is automatically a Bangladeshi citizen, but Dhaka said that was not the case for Begum.
Begum’s apparent grief in the initial interviews caused outrage, but she has since expressed remorse for her actions and sympathy for the victims of IS.
In a documentary last year, he said that when he arrived in Syria he quickly realized that IS was “killing people” to increase the caliphate’s numbers and “look good”.
Some 900 people are estimated to have traveled from Britain to Syria and Iraq to join IS. Of those, about 150 are believed to have been stripped of their citizenship, according to government figures.
