Shamima Begum loses last bid to regain British citizenship

Shamima Begum, who traveled with two friends from her home in London to Syria as a teenager in 2015 to join the Islamic State group, has lost her latest attempt to regain her British citizenship.

Britain’s Court of Appeal on Friday upheld an earlier tribunal’s ruling that a 2019 government decision to strip Ms Begum of her citizenship was legal.

The decision means Ms Begum, now 24, who has been living in a refugee camp in Syria since 2019, cannot return to Britain and remains effectively stateless.

However, legal experts said her team could challenge Friday’s decision and appeal to the UK Supreme Court.

Ms Begum’s case has been the subject of intense debate in Britain after she was interviewed by a reporter at The Times of London in February 2019 in a Syrian refugee camp after the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, was expelled from much of its territory. She told the journalist, Anthony Lloyd, that she wanted to return home, and a short time later Sajid Javid, the then Home Secretary, revoked her citizenship, citing risks to national security.

She has been living in the refugee camp for years, along with thousands of others linked to Islamic State, including other Europeans whose countries have been reluctant to repatriate them.

On Friday, the Court of Appeal decided solely on whether an earlier tribunal decision, which found Mr Javid’s actions were lawful, was correct.

Judge Sue Carr made it clear that the court stood by that earlier ruling, saying it was not for the court to determine whether stripping her citizenship was too harsh.

“You could say the decision in Ms Begum’s case was harsh,” Judge Carr said. “It could also be argued that Ms Begum is the author of her own misfortune, but it is not for this court to agree or disagree with either position.”

Ms Begum’s lawyers had argued that the government had breached human rights law by failing to check whether she was a victim of human trafficking before revoking her citizenship.

Last year, the Special Committee on Immigration Appeals ruled that the decision to revoke Ms Begum’s citizenship was fair and that Mr Javid had acted within the law. But that court also said that Ms Begum was likely trafficked by ISIS “as a matter of common sense”.

British law prohibits revoking the citizenship of anyone who would remain stateless. Mr Javid had argued that as Ms Begum has parents of Bangladeshi descent, she could apply for citizenship there before she turned 21. But she was effectively rendered stateless as Bangladesh also made it clear that she was not welcome to receive citizenship.

Ms Begum left her home in east London in February 2015 and traveled to Syria with two friends, Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase, when they were all 15 or 16. The story of the group, which became known in the British press as the “Bethnal Green Girls” for the London neighborhood where they lived, was a stark example of how the extremist group used social media to radicalize and rally young Westerners to its cause. recruiting.

Ms Begum married a Dutch Islamic State fighter while living in Islamic State-controlled territory. They had three children, all of whom died.

The families of Ms Sultana and Ms Abase, who also married Islamic State fighters, have told British news media they believe the two women were killed in airstrikes.

When Islamic State was driven from most of its territory in Syria and Iraq by coalition forces, Ms. Begum ended up in the Al Hol refugee camp, where about 55,000 people still live, mostly women and children who were relatives of ISIS fighters. .

Aid groups working in the camp have warned of the brutal conditions and high mortality rate, especially among children. Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym Doctors Without Borders, said this last month in a report that those in the camp “face numerous challenges, including limited access to water, inadequate sanitation, and a health care system held back by restrictive safety practices.”

Maya Foa, the director of Reprieve, a London-based human rights group, said that “the whole episode shames ministers who would rather bully a child victim of human trafficking than recognize Britain’s responsibilities,” in a statement briefly after the decision. “The wholesale deprivation of citizenship and leaving British families in prisons in the desert is a terrible, unsustainable policy designed to score cheap political points,” she added.