Shamima Begum was unable to “play any meaningful part in her appeal”, according to the British court that nevertheless decided her fate, because of the difficulties in communicating with her while she was stranded in a Syrian refugee camp.
The 20-year-old, who fled east London to join Islamic State, was unable to contribute evidence in her own defence, as she was living, her lawyers said, in “squalid” and “wretched” conditions in the crowded al-Roj camp, guarded by Syrian Kurds.
As a result, Begum’s story – and the threat she may or may not pose if she returned to the UK – played only a small part in the largely technical deliberations of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) in a basement courtroom.
Nevertheless, Siac’s decision on Friday, that Begum was not rendered stateless by the previous home secretary Sajid Javid last year, built on the fact that Home Office lawyers had argued she was too dangerous to be allowed to return to the country of her birth.
Aged just 15, Begum ran away from home and school in Bethnal Green with two friends, stealing an older sister’s passport to reach Syria as Islamic State emerged from the wreckage of the country’s civil war.
Begum soon married a 23-year-old Isis fighter called Yago Riedijk, from Dutch city of Arnhem. Over the next three years the couple had two children, both of whom had died, and Begum was nine months pregnant with their third when, last February, she was rediscovered in another refugee camp by a journalist from the Times.
Begum had fled the battle of Baghuz, where Isis was making its last stand. “I don’t regret coming here,” she said, referring to her original decision to travel to Syria, but added: “Now all I want to do is to come home to Britain.”
Six days later, Javid revoked her British citizenship, arguing that she had the right to take Bangladeshi citizenship via her parents, even though she had never visited the country, and did not speak its official language, Bengali.
Begum was one of more than 100 Britons who had travelled to join Isis to be treated this way, and Javid argued in front of MPs that his response was rational. “Whatever role they took in the so-called caliphate, they all supported a terrorist organisation and in doing so they have shown they hate our country and the values we stand for,” he said.
Shortly after Javid’s decision, Begum gave birth to a son, Jarrah. But disease was rife in the insanitary conditions of the sprawling al-Hawl camp where -they were living. It was labelled the “camp of death” because so many children had died there, and Jarrah became one of them, contracting pneumonia and dying 10 days later.
The national security argument heard in court was that Begum had aligned with the Islamist group, not only by travelling to Syria, but by remaining until nearly the last days of the self-styled caliphate, thus showing a high degree of commitment to it.
Security sources have gone further, suggesting Begum was a member of al-Hisba, Isis’s morality police, during which time she carried a Kalashnikov and had a reputation for strictness. Begum also allegedly “stitched suicide bombers into explosive vests”. These are all claims the intelligence community stands by, arguing that women are as capable as men of actively participating in a violent regime.
In the citizenship hearing, Begum’s lawyers said it was difficult to obtain information from their client that would enable them to comprehensively defend her. “It is not possible to take instructions on her intentions, the circumstances in which she left, what she has been doing, family relations and so forth,” her barrister, Tom Hickman QC, said during the four-day hearing in October.
The exact truth may never be properly examined, given the immigration tribunal’s verdict on Friday. However, if Begum were to win her appeal against it, and somehow return to the UK, security sources have indicated she would almost certainly face a terrorism trial.
That said, they argue, it would be difficult to obtain evidence from Syria that could stand up in a British court. The likelihood is that the most serious charge that could be levied against her would be membership of a banned organisation, Isis, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years.
Less than a week after the terrorist stabbing in Streatham, and with ministers also pushing through emergency legislation to end mandatory halfway release for terror offenders, Conservative politicians feel their hard line on Begum is not only justified but politically popular.
More broadly, the government is refusing to repatriate any of the 60 or so men and women from the UK being held in prisons and camps in Kurdish-controlled north-east Syria – and depriving them of citizenship where possible. In one case, the Home Office is willing to allow four children, all under 10, to return to the UK, but only if their parents, both whom who have had their citizenship stripped, give them up.
It fell to Begum’s lawyers to make an alternative argument. Daniel Furner, of Birnberg Peirce Solicitors, said some other countries “dealing with similar cases, in particular of very young women, have found safe, sensible and humane ways of returning and reintegrating their citizens quietly, and with expert advice, into a normal existence”.
Legal proceedings, Furner concluded, “fail to provide swift and practical answers to such acute human predicaments as this”.
