ISIS bride Shamima Begum accused of making 'self-serving' PR attempts by MI5 as she is blocked from coming to the UK
22 February 2023, 19:47 | Updated: 22 February 2023, 19:48
ISIS bride Shamima Begum, who was banned from coming back into Britain on Wednesday and told she will not have her citizenship restored, used media interviews as "self-serving PR", according to MI5.
The British security agency said that comments she made on ITV and the BBC were calculated at swaying public opinion ahead of her legal challenge to have her citizenship restored.
Shamima, 23, lost her legal challenge over the decision to deprive her of her British citizenship, which was revoked on national security grounds by then-home secretary Sajid Javid after she was found, nine months pregnant, in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019.
She brought a challenge against the Home Office over the decision at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) but Mr Justice Jay rejected Ms Begum’s legal challenge this morning.
Today's decision bars her from from returning to the UK and leaves her stuck in a camp in northern Syria.
The tribunal found there was “credible suspicion” that Begum had been trafficked to Syria for sexual exploitation, and there had been “arguable breaches of duty” by state bodies who failed to stop her leaving the UK, but it said that was not a bar to her British citizenship being removed.
Ms Begum appeared in a ten-part podcast series on the BBC, as well as on ITV's Good Morning Britain. She denied having sewn fighters into suicide vests, claiming instead to have been a housewife and a mother.
But, as revealed in Mr Justice Jay's decision, MI5 said their assessment was that "many of the comments Ms Begum made in her later interviews are likely to have been self-serving and an attempt to obtain favourable media coverage in the run-up to this appeal."
But the ruling was criticised by for Tory MP David Davis, who told LBC that the UK's own authorities are more guilty of misbehaviour than Ms Begum herself.
Adding that he was "not fond of the lady", he said that he doesn't agree that she is "guilty of a crime or threat to our safety", and said that it was wrong to deny her the right that "everyone born in Britain should have".
LBC's Tom Swarbrick quizzed the MP, asking: “What crimes do you think the British state may have committed?”
Mr Davis said that the British state had "allowed" a trafficker to "take someone for a brutal purpose" - as a "sex slave to terrorists".
Other politicians and campaign groups, including Baroness Warsi and Amnesty International also said that Ms Begum should be allowed back into the country to face justice.
Mr Justice Jay said: "The commission concluded that there was a credible suspicion that Ms Begum had been trafficked to Syria within the meaning of relevant international legal instruments.
"Essentially, and from the perspective of those responsible for the trafficking, the motive for bringing her to Syria was sexual exploitation to which, as a child, she could not give a valid consent.
2019: Shamima Begum talks about decision to go to Syria
"The commission also concluded that there were arguable breaches of duty on the part of various state bodies in permitting Ms Begum to leave the country as she did and eventually cross the border from Turkey into Syria."
Her lawyers said after the decision that her case was ‘far from over’ and that they would appeal today’s decision.
In a statement, Gareth Pierce and Daniel Furner, from Birnberg Pierce Solicitors, said: "The outcome is that there is now no protection for a British child trafficked out of the UK if the home secretary invokes national security.
"Regrettably, this is a lost opportunity to put into reverse a profound mistake and a continuing injustice.
"Ms Begum remains in unlawful, arbitrary and indefinite detention without trial in a Syrian camp. Every possible avenue to challenge this decision will be urgently pursued.
"In our view, that demands the Secretary of State must carefully review the original decision in light of the commission's troubling findings."
They have asked for Home Secretary Suella Braverman to have the ‘courage’ to look at the case again.
She was 15 when she travelled from Bethnal Green, east London, through Turkey and into territory controlled by Islamic State (IS) with two other schoolgirls in 2015.
Her British citizenship was revoked on national security grounds shortly after she was found in the refugee camp in Syria.
She has been locked in a legal battle with the Government ever since in an attempt to get her citizenship restored.
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Caller slams 'snowflakes' who would let Shamima Begum back in the UK
In the latest stage, she challenged the Home Office at the Special Immigration Appeals Tribunal (SIAC) over the decision.
When the case was heard last year, Ms Begum's lawyers told the court she should have been treated as a victim of child trafficking and was "recruited" and taken to Syria for "sexual exploitation" and to marry a man.
But barristers for the Home Office defended the Government's decision, arguing that people trafficked to Syria and brainwashed can still be threats to national security, adding that Ms Begum expressed no remorse when she initially emerged from IS-controlled territory.
In a series of BBC interviews broadcast last month, the now 23-year-old said she understands public anger towards her but insisted she was not a "bad person".
Shamima Begum seen walking around camp in archive footage
Her supporters claimed she was a victim of trafficking and grooming by ISIS, but the government said she went to Syria with ‘eyes wide open’ and posed a danger to society.
The Special Immigration Appeals Commission dismissed Begum’s appeal on all grounds. She is currently being held at a camp in northern Syria following the collapse of the ISIS ‘caliphate’.
Sajid Javid, who was home secretary when Shamima Begum was first stripped of her British citizenship, said: "I welcome today's court ruling, which has again upheld my decision to remove an individual's citizenship on national security grounds.
"This is a complex case but home secretaries should have the power to prevent anyone entering our country who is assessed to pose a threat to it."
The Home Office said it was "pleased" the court has ruled against Shamima Begum.
In a statement, a spokeswoman said: "We are pleased that the court has found in favour of the Government's position in this case.
"The Government's priority remains maintaining the safety and security of the UK and we will robustly defend any decision made in doing so."
Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s Refugee and Migrant Rights Director, said:“This is a very disappointing decision.
“The Home Secretary shouldn’t be in the business of exiling British citizens by stripping them of their citizenship.
“The power to banish a citizen like this simply shouldn’t exist in the modern world, not least when we’re talking about a person who was seriously exploited as a child.
“Shamima Begum had lived all her life in the UK right up to the point she was lured to Syria as an impressionable 15-year-old.
“ISIS have been responsible for appalling crimes in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, but that doesn’t change that Shamima Begum is British and was groomed and trafficked to Syria.
“Along with thousands of others, including large numbers of women and children, this young British woman is now trapped in a dangerous refugee camp in a war-torn country and left largely at the mercy of gangs and armed groups."
Baroness Warsi, former co-chairwoman of the Conservative Party and a member of the House of Lords, said that the "extreme powers" used to strip Ms Begum and others of their citizenship had "almost exclusively" been used against Muslims and created a "two-tier citizenship system" in the country which is "completely at odds with British values of fairness and equality before the law".
Maya Foa, director of legal charity Reprieve, said the UK "should take responsibility" for Shamima Begum as it would any other trafficked British teenager.
