[IsraelTimes] British-born Shamima Begum, now 24, was 15 when she and 2 friends left London to marry IS terrorists in Syria; her citizenship was rescinded after she surfaced in 2019.A woman who traveled to Syria as a teenager to join the Islamic State group lost her appeal Friday against the British government’s decision to revoke her UK citizenship, with judges saying that it wasn’t for them to rule on whether it was “harsh” to do so.
Shamima Begum,
...along with her two best friends from school (Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana) — in Bethnal Green in east London — she fell in love with the romantic idea of being a jihadi wife and brood mare for the new Muslim nation, seduced by messages from early adopter Pak-Scot Aqsa Mahmood. Before running off to Syria they recruited among their English schoolmates for the ISIS cause. Umm Three-Dead-Babies thrived in her chosen environment, marrying a Dutch convert and being promoted to enforcer in the women’s branch of the ISIS morality police before it all fell apart. Now stuck in an SDF camp in Syria, she’d been doing her taqiyya best to seduce the Brits into bringing her back home for round two....
who is now 24, was 15 when she and two other girls fled from London in February 2015 to marry IS fighters in Syria at a time when the group’s online recruitment program lured many impressionable young people to its self-proclaimed caliphate. Begum married a Dutch man fighting for IS and had three children, who all died.Authorities withdrew her British citizenship soon after she surfaced in a Syrian refugee camp in 2019, where she has been ever since. Last year, Begum lost her appeal against the decision at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, a tribunal which hears challenges to decisions to remove British citizenship on national security grounds. Her lawyers brought a further bid to overturn that decision at the Court of Appeal, with Britannia’s Home Office opposing the challenge.
All three judges dismissed her case and argued she had made a "calculated" decision to join IS even though she may have been "influenced and manipulated by others." In relaying the ruling, Chief Justice Sue Carr said it wasn’t the court’s job to decide whether the decision to strip Begum of her British citizenship was "harsh" or whether she was the "author of her own misfortune." She said the court’s sole task was to assess whether the decision to strip Begum of her citizenship was unlawful.
"Since it was not, Ms. Begum’s appeal is dismissed," the judge added.
Carr said any arguments over the consequences of the unanimous judgment, which could include a bid to appeal at Britannia’s Supreme Court, will be adjourned for seven days.
Begum’s lawyer indicated that a further challenge was on the cards.
"I think the only thing we can really say for certainty is that we are going to keep fighting," Daniel Furner said outside the Royal Courts of Justice.
Begum’s legal team argued that the decision by Britannia’s then-interior minister Sajid Javid, left her stateless and that she should have been treated as a child trafficking victim, not a security risk.
Britannia’s Conservative government claimed she could seek a Bangladeshi passport based on family ties. But Begum’s family argued that she was from the UK and never held a Bangladeshi passport.
A number of campaigners voiced their disappointment after the ruling and said the solution rests with the government shouldering its responsibility.
"It is now a political problem, and the government holds the key to solving it," said Maya Foa, director of the Reprieve human rights
...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions...
campaign group. "If the government thinks that Shamima Begum has committed a crime, she should be prosecuted in a British court. Citizenship stripping is not the answer."