Shamima Begum can’t go back to court to plead for her British citizenship back
Shamima Begum cannot go back to court to get her British citizenship back, a minister has insisted after the ISIS bride gave an interview denying carrying out atrocities.
ISIS-bride Begum was stripped of her citizenship in 2019 by Sajid Javid and in February this year the Supreme Court ruled on national security grounds that she cannot return to Britain to pursue an appeal against the decision.
However, she announced yesterday she is willing to face trial in Britain for the chance to come back.
In an interview with Sky News, she repeated her denial of accusations that she carried out atrocities as part of IS (so-called Islamic State), saying they are ‘all completely false’.
But, after being played the interview, Business minister Paul Scully was quick to slap down her plea.
He told Sky News: ‘I think the Supreme Court has ruled on this matter. In terms of the actual case, what I don’t want to do is have it out via broadcast.
‘It has been heard by the Supreme Court after the Home Secretary made a really clear ruling.’
Asked whether she still represented a threat to national security, Mr Scully replied: ‘That I can’t tell. I’ve seen the interview there, but I’m not privy to intelligence documents.’
Begum left her east London home for Syria as a 15-year-old schoolgirl in 2015.
Now aged 22, Begum insists she did not hate the UK when she fled to Syria to join the terror group and has repeated her plea for a chance to fight accusations against her in court.
She denies any involvement in terror activities and spoken previously of how she wanted to be brought back to the UK to face charges.
Begum has ‘hopes and dreams’ but has no plan B if her citizenship is not reinstated.
She told the broadcaster: ‘I’m willing to fight them in a court of law but I’m not being given a chance.’
Begum said her decision to leave the UK as a teenager was not made quickly and that it was something she ‘thought about for a while’.
She said: ‘I didn’t hate Britain, I hated my life really.
‘I felt very constricted, and I felt I couldn’t live the life that I wanted in the UK as a British woman.
‘I feel like the only crime I committed was coming here so I would be willing to go to prison for that. But for the accusations against me, I’m just going to have to fight against them.’
Begum remains in the al-Roj refugee camp in Syria, which she said has become a ‘more scary’ place to live in.
She said: ‘For a long time it wasn’t violent but for some reason it’s become more scary to live here. Maybe the women have got tired of waiting for something.’
She said that she would like to reconcile with her family ‘when the time is right’, adding: ‘I don’t think they failed me, in a way I failed them’.
Begum has previously told how she married Dutch convert Yago Riedijk 10 days after arriving in IS territory, and had three children all of whom died.
She said when she goes to sleep she thinks of ‘my children dying, the bombings, the constant running, my friends dying’.
The east London schoolgirl who dumped her veil a year ago and now straightens her dyed hair, paints her nails and wears make-up, fled her home in 2015 to join the so-called Islamic State terror group in Syria with two friends both now believed to be dead. She denies her image change is a publicity stunt.
In September she appeared on Good Morning Britain wearing a Nike baseball cap and a low-cut vest top instead of a niqab.
Begum said she is a victim of grooming by extremists, would now ‘rather die’ than rejoin ISIS and admitted she was wrong to say the Manchester Arena attack was ‘justified’ because of airstrikes that have killed civilians in Syria. She also said she had no idea ISIS was a ‘death cult’ when she joined.
She told Good Morning Britain: ‘No one can hate me more than I hate myself for what I’ve done and all I can say is I’m sorry and just give me a second chance’, but she added she was ‘groomed and taken advantage of and manipulated into’ travelling to Syria.
Denying she is a criminal, she said: ‘The only crime I think I committed was being dumb enough to come to ISIS’.
Begum also made a jaw-dropping offer to the Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who wants her kept out of Britain, she said: ‘You are clearly struggling with extremism and terrorism in your country. I could very much help you with that because you clearly don’t know what you’re doing’. She added: ‘I want them (the British public) to see me as an asset rather than a threat to them.’
She has begged to be brought back to the UK to face a terror trial. Asked why she won’t go to Bangladesh, she said: ‘How can a country like the UK, who does not believe in the death penalty, how can they expect me to go to a country where I will be killed?’
She said: ‘I made a mistake at a very young age. I know it’s very hard for the British people to try and forgive me because they have lived in fear of Isis and lost loved ones because of Isis, but I also have lived in fear of Isis and I also lost loved ones because of Isis, so I can sympathise with them in that way. I know it is very hard for them to forgive me but I say from the bottom of my heart that I am so sorry if I ever offended anyone by coming here, if I ever offended anyone by the things I said.’
Amid claims of her innocence, her classmates in London have previously said that Begum wore an ISIS badge on her blazer in an attempt to recruit class members to join the terror group alongside her friends Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana. She previously described with chilling nonchalance how she ‘wasn’t fazed’ by the sight of a severed head. Begum also declared how she had a ‘good time’ with Isis, and justified the terror group’s bombing of Manchester Arena.
There are also claims that intelligence officials briefed Boris Johnson that she had been witnessed handling suicide vests and sewing them on to jihadis, as well as caring for injured terrorists in Raqqa hospitals.
In a direct plea to Boris Johnson, before asking to meet Sajid Javid face to face because he revoked her British citizenship when he was Home Secretary, she said: ‘You are clearly struggling with extremism and terrorism in your country and I want to help with that telling you my own experience what they say and how they persuade people to come to places like Syria and I could very much help you with that because you clearly don’t know what you’re doing in the fight against terrorism and I want to help’
Begum said she came to Syria expecting simply to get married, have children and ‘live a pure, Islamic life’, adding: ‘The reason I came to Syria was not for violent reasons.’
She added: ‘At the time I did not know it (so-called Islamic State) was a death cult, I thought it was an Islamic community I was joining.
‘I was being fed a lot of information on the internet by people.’ She said she thought she was ‘groomed and taken advantage of and manipulated into’ travelling to Syria.
Begum has also never been open about what she did for the group, but it has been claims she worked caring for injured jihadis in the terror group’s former stronghold of Raqqa in northern Syria.
She married Dutch jihadi Yago Riedijk and had three children, all of whom died.
Begum, who frequently swept the hair from her face with hands decorated with pink-coloured nail varnish, denied being directly involved in terrorist preparations.
She told Good Morning Britain: ‘I am willing to go to court and face the people who made these claims and refute these claims, because I know I did nothing in IS but be a mother and a wife.
‘These claims are being made to make me look worse because the Government do not have anything on me.
‘There is no evidence because nothing ever happened.’
She added: ‘I would rather die than go back to IS.’
Begum said she regretted her actions and apologised for the comments she previously made about the Manchester Arena bombing.
She said: ‘I do not believe that one evil justifies another evil. I don’t think that women and children should be killed for other people’s motives and for other people’s agendas.’
Begum said she did not know that women and children were hurt in Manchester.
‘I did not know about the Manchester bombing when I was asked. I did not know that people were killed, I did not know that women and children were hurt because of it.’
Begum said it was ‘not justifiable to kill innocent people in the name of religion’.
She also apologised to anyone who has been affected by Isis and the terror group’s actions.
She said: ‘I’m in a different camp, obviously. I have friends now. I have a security shield now around me with my friends and I feel more confident in myself.
‘I obviously don’t have my son anymore so I only have to think about my safety so if I do get attacked for taking my hijab off, it’s on me.
‘While I’m in this camp, I’m trying to change myself. I’m trying to better myself, because I can.’
In an apology to the public, she said: ‘Of course I am completely sorry for anyone that has been affected by Isis.
‘In no way do I agree with what they did, I don’t, I’m not trying to justify what they did, it’s not justifiable to kill innocent people in the name of religion.’
Her striking new image has turned the global spotlight on to Shamima Begum and her life at al-Roj.
She is among a 50-strong British contingent of women and children at the encampment, which houses around 800 families in total.
The authorities at al-Roj — the Kurdish-led and Western-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — have banned black clothing, the colour of Isis, and black face veils.
A number of woman, like Ms Begum, have voluntarily given up Islamic dress entirely. Ms Begum mixes with a small circle of European and American friends.
U.S.-born Hoda Muthana, 26, once a high-profile Isis agitator, is a member of her close-knit social group, so too is Canadian Kimberly Polman, a mother of three adult children in her late 40s; all three were Isis brides.
Source: Daily Mail
