Shamima Begum | |
|---|---|
| Born | 25 August 1999 London, England |
| Citizenship | United Kingdom (until 2019) |
| Education | Bethnal Green Academy |
| Spouse | Yago Riedijk (m. 2015) |
| Children | 3 (all deceased) |
Shamima Begum (born 25 August 1999) [1] is a British-born woman who entered Syria to join the Islamic State at the age of 15. [2] As of 2024, she is living in al-Roj detention camp in Syria. [3] [4]
While enrolled at Bethnal Green Academy, Begum and two schoolmates travelled to Syria in February 2015. The journey was facilitated by an IS smuggler who was providing information to Canadian intelligence. Ten days after her arrival, Begum married a 23-year-old fellow IS member; the marriage produced three children, who all died young.
In February 2019, Begum was discovered alive at the al-Hawl refugee camp in Northern Syria by war correspondent Anthony Loyd. The following day, British Home Secretary Sajid Javid revoked her British citizenship, [5] stating that Begum would never be allowed to return to the United Kingdom. [6] Begum initiated legal proceedings challenging the lawfulness of this decision. British courts ruled that Javid's decision had been lawful, with the Supreme Court refusing Begum's final attempt for permission to appeal on 7 August 2024. [7] At the present time, Begum can launch no further legal challenge within the British legal system, but has, through her lawyers, intimated an intention to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights. [8]
Begum was born in London to immigrant parents of Bangladeshi Muslim origin and citizenship. [9] She was raised in the Bethnal Green area of Tower Hamlets in East London, where she received her secondary education at the Bethnal Green Academy. [10]
Together with her friends Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, she left the UK in February 2015, at age 15. They travelled via Turkey to join the ISIS in Syria. [11] [12]
Shortly after her departure, Begum's sister expressed hope that she and her school friends had travelled to IS territory only to bring back their friend Sharmeena Begum (no relation), who had travelled there in 2014. [13]
Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said in February 2015 that everyone hoped and prayed for the safe return of the three girls to the UK. [14]
Ten days after arriving in Syria, Begum married Dutch-born Yago Riedijk, a convert to Islam who had arrived in Syria in October 2014. [15] [16] This marriage may not be recognised under Dutch law since she was underage at that time. [17] She gave birth to three children, all of whom died young; her youngest child was born in a refugee camp in February 2019 and, by March 2019, had died of a lung infection. [18] [19]
The Daily Telegraph reported that Begum had been an "enforcer" in ISIS's "morality police", and had tried to recruit other young women to join the jihadist group. [20] The report said that she was allowed to carry a Kalashnikov rifle and earned a reputation as a strict enforcer of IS's laws, such as dress codes for women. An anti-IS activist was also reported by The Daily Telegraph as saying that there were allegations of Begum stitching suicide bombs into explosive vests so they could not be removed without detonating. [21] None of this was proved, and much of what has been reported in media is denied by Shamima Begum. Later, investigative journalist Josh Baker posed as an ISIS member and was able to speak with the person responsible for convincing Shamima to join the group. A school friend by the name of Sharmeena Begum described Shamima as a "shy misfit" whose role has been greatly exaggerated in the media. [22]
In 2022, investigative journalist Josh Baker retraced her route through Turkey and uncovered a vast ISIS people-smuggling network that facilitated Begum's travel to Syria. He also received hundreds of pages of secret files on the smuggler that revealed the man at the heart of the network, Mohammed Rashed, was conducting an intelligence operation. A serving senior intelligence officer confirmed to Baker that Rashed was a Canadian asset. [23] [24]
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said: "Obviously we know we live in a particularly dangerous world, the fight against terrorism requires our intelligence services to continue to be flexible and to be creative in their approaches but every step of the way they are bound by strict rules, by principles and values that Canadians hold dear… and we expect that those rights be followed. I know there are questions about certain incidents or operations of the past and we will ensure to follow up on those." [25] [26]
Separately published in August 2022, Richard Kerbaj's book The Secret History of the Five Eyes claimed that Mohammed Rashed, who helped her travel to Syria, was passing information to Canadian intelligence, which was known to the Metropolitan Police. This link was not acknowledged by British or Canadian authorities. Canadian intelligence was using Rashed for information on the Islamic State, while allowing him to help people to travel to Syria to work for them. Kerbaj said that he had interviewed many Canadian intelligence officers, who confirmed the timeline of events. [27] [28]
In February 2019, The Times ' war correspondent Anthony Loyd found Begum at the al-Hawl refugee camp in Northern Syria. [29] [30] She was pregnant with her third child and said that she wanted to return to the UK to raise her children, but did not regret her decision to join IS. [29] Begum said she had been unfazed by seeing the head of a beheaded man as he was "an enemy of Islam", but believed that IS did not deserve victory because of their corruption and oppression. [29]
When asked if she would be extracted from Syria, Security Minister Ben Wallace said, "I'm not putting at risk British people's lives to go and look for terrorists or former terrorists in a failed state." [31] Three days after Loyd found her, Begum gave birth to a boy. [18]
Begum was interviewed by BBC correspondent Quentin Sommerville on 18 February 2019. During the interview, Begum asked for the UK's forgiveness and claimed that she still supported "some British values". She said she had been partly inspired to join IS by videos of fighters beheading hostages and also of "the good life" under the group. When asked about the Manchester Arena bombing, she said she was shocked and didn't "know about the kids", then said it was wrong to kill innocent people, but that IS considered it justified as retaliation for the coalition bombing of IS-held areas. When questioned about rape, enslavement and murder of Yazidi women, she claimed, "Shia do the same in Iraq". [32]
Begum's frequent visits from journalists at al-Hawl earned the attention of female Tunisian IS camp members who threatened her if she spoke out against IS ideology. [33] On 1 March 2019, her lawyer confirmed that Begum had been moved to al-Roj refugee camp for her safety. [34]
In 2021, Begum cooperated with investigative journalist Josh Baker and gave what she claims is her full account of what happened. It is investigated in the podcast The Shamima Begum Story as series 2 of I'm Not A Monster. [35] She is also featured in a film of the same name. [36]
In 2019, UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid announced that he had made an order depriving Begum of British citizenship. [5] Under international law, the UK government could not deprive her of British citizenship if such deprivation would leave her stateless. However, the UK government contended that Begum was a dual national, also holding citizenship of Bangladesh, and was not therefore made stateless by the decision. [37] [5] [38] The Government of Bangladesh stated that Begum did not currently hold Bangladeshi citizenship and, without it, would not be allowed to enter Bangladesh. [39] [40] [41] However, the British courts later accepted the argument that Begum was indeed a citizen of Bangladesh from birth (see below).
Under British law, Begum had the right to appeal against the Home Office's decision to revoke her UK citizenship. [5] Javid's decision was criticised by Begum's immediate family members, but her brother-in-law Muhammad Rahman urged the public to support the government decision. He said: "The information they have is to the best of their ability and the British people should support it." [42] Begum said that she might consider applying for Dutch citizenship. [43] [44]
In February 2019, her father Ahmed Ali said, "If she at least admitted she made a mistake then I would feel sorry for her and other people would feel sorry for her, but she does not accept her wrong." Begum reacted by stating that she regretted speaking to the media and said the UK is making an example out of her. [45]
On 3 March, Yago Riedijk, her husband, a member of IS, was interviewed by the BBC in a Kurdish detention centre in Syria. He said that he wished to return to the Netherlands with Begum. [17] The Dutch government stated that they were not going to repatriate him. [46]
On 8 March, Syrian Democratic Forces announced that Begum's son Jarrah, whose imminent birth had apparently motivated her desire to return to the UK, had died in hospital the previous day. The cause of death was certified as pneumonia. [19] The baby was buried in an unmarked grave outside of al-Roj. [33] Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott and human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith criticised the UK government's decision to block Begum's return to the UK. [47]
A government spokesman said that, "The death of any child is tragic and deeply distressing for the family". Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt reiterated the position stated by Ben Wallace concerning risks to operatives who might be sent to recover her. He said "Shamima knew when she made the decision to join Daesh, she was going into a country where there was no embassy, there was no consular assistance, and I'm afraid those decisions, awful though it is, they do have consequences". He said that the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development were trying to rescue IS brides and that the decisions to deprive individuals of UK citizenship were based on evidence. [48]
It was reported in August 2022 that Begum’s lawyer claims the British authorities knew that Begum was helped to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State by a Canadian intelligence agent –as claimed by Richard Kerbaj in his book The Secret History of the Five Eyes –a factor that had not been brought to the attention of the Supreme Court. [27] [28] Tasnime Akunjee, lawyer for the Begum family, said he had obtained a hearing in November 2022 to challenge the removal of Begum's citizenship on the basis that as Home Secretary, Sajid Javid had failed to consider that she was a victim of human trafficking. [49]
On 22 February 2023, it was reported that the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) had ruled that the revocation of her citizenship was lawful. [50] [51]
In 2019 Begum was stripped of her UK citizenship, [52] by Sajid Javid while he was Home Secretary for the Conservative Party government. [53]
Making citizens stateless (without citizenship of any country) is unlawful under the British Nationality Act 1981, section 40 [54] and is also contrary to the United Nations Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, of which the UK is a signatory. Begum was born a British citizen under United Kingdom law as her father (despite having already left the UK) had indefinite leave to remain and so had the "settled in the United Kingdom" status that the British Nationality Act 1981 describes as being a satisfactory prerequisite to allow Begum to be born a British citizen. [55] [56] However, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission found that as a matter of Bangladeshi nationality law Begum also holds Bangladeshi citizenship through her parents, under section 5 of the Citizenship Act, 1951. [57]
In April 2019, it was reported that Begum had been granted legal aid to fight the revocation of her British citizenship. Hunt described the Legal Aid Agency's decision as "very uncomfortable", but said that the UK is "a country that believes that people with limited means should have access to the resources of the state if they want to challenge the decisions the state has made about them". [58]
In May 2019, Bangladeshi foreign minister Abdul Momen repeated his position on Begum and added that if she entered Bangladesh she would face the death penalty due to the nation's "zero tolerance policy" towards terrorism. [59]
In August 2019, the Metropolitan Police requested media organisations that had interviewed Begum—the BBC, ITN, Sky News and The Times—to surrender any unpublished material they may hold about Begum. They sought disclosure under the Terrorism Act 2000 in order to prepare a potential prosecution against Begum. [60]
Her lawyer, Tasnime Akunjee, travelled to Kurdish-controlled Syria to meet Begum but was turned away. [61]
In July 2020, the Court of Appeal ruled that Begum could return to the UK to contest the government's decision to rescind her British citizenship. It was unclear how she would return to the UK to plead her case, as the British government had previously stated that it would never let her return. [62] The Home Secretary appealed the decision to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom; in February 2021 the court ruled in Begum v Home Secretary in favour of the Home Secretary on all grounds. [63] [64]
On 22 February 2023, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission rejected her appeal against revocation of her British citizenship, which effectively prohibits her from entering the United Kingdom. Begum's lawyers said they would appeal the decision. [50] [51] On 23 February 2024, the Court of Appeal unanimously rejected a further appeal from her against the commission's decision. [65]
On 7 August 2024, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled she will not be allowed to challenge the removal of her British citizenship as the grounds of her case "do not raise an arguable point of law". The ruling was unanimous. [66]
Begum was the central figure in the second season of the BBC's I'm Not a Monster podcast series, called "I'm Not a Monster: The Shamima Begum Story", by BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 5 Live. [67] [68] [69] and a follow up second series in 2024 her called "The Shamima Begum Story, Series 2: The Court Decides". [70] The first series was about a family from the United States who travelled to join the same cult. [71] [72] [73]
Anthony William Vivian Loyd is an English journalist and war correspondent, best known for his 1999 book My War Gone By, I Miss It So. He gained prominence in February 2019 when he tracked down a British ISIL bride, Shamima Begum.
David Philip Pannick, Baron Pannick, is a British barrister and a crossbencher in the House of Lords. He practises mainly in the areas of public law and human rights. He has argued cases before the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords, the European Court of Justice, and the European Court of Human Rights.
Mulberry Academy Shoreditch is a comprehensive co-educational academy for students aged between 11–18 in the Bethnal Green neighbourhood of the Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London.
Sir Sajid Javid is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care from June 2021 to July 2022, having previously served as Home Secretary from 2018 to 2019 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2019 to 2020. A member of the Conservative Party, he was Member of Parliament for Bromsgrove between 2010 and 2024.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the United Kingdom. British citizens have fought as members of the group, and there has been political debate on how to punish them. On 26 September 2014, Parliament voted to begin Royal Air Force airstrikes against ISIL in northern Iraq at the request of the Iraqi government, which began four days later, using Tornado GR4 jets. On 2 December 2015, the UK Parliament authorised an extension to the Royal Air Force airstrike campaign, joining the US-led international coalition against ISIL in Syria. Hours after the vote, Royal Air Force Tornado jets began bombing ISIL-controlled oilfields.
Sir Alexander William Younger is a British intelligence officer who served as the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), from 2014 to 2020. In April 2019, the government extended Younger's contract to maintain stability through the Brexit negotiations, which made him the longest-serving MI6 chief in 50 years.
Sir Julian Martin Flaux is the Chancellor of the High Court.
The Bethnal Green trio are Amira Abase, Shamima Begum, and Kadiza Sultana, three British girls who attended the Bethnal Green Academy in London before leaving home in February 2015 to join the Islamic State. According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, they were among an estimated 550 women and girls from Western countries who had travelled to join IS—part of what some have called "a jihadi, girl-power subculture", the so-called Brides of ISIL. As of 2024, one girl has been reported killed (Sultana), one girl has been stripped of her British citizenship and denied re-entry into the country (Begum) while the third's fate is unknown (Abase).
Jack Abraham Letts is a Canadian Muslim convert, formerly of dual British-Canadian nationality, who has been accused of being a member of the Islamic State (IS). He was given the nickname Jihadi Jack by the British media.
Hoda Muthana is a U.S.-born Yemeni woman who emigrated from the United States to Syria to join ISIS in November 2014. She surrendered in January 2019 to coalition forces fighting ISIS in Syria and has been denied access back to the United States after a U.S. court ruling rejected her claim to American citizenship. When she was born, her father was a Yemeni diplomat, making her ineligible for American citizenship by birth.
Beginning in 2012, dozens of girls and women traveled to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State (IS), becoming brides of Islamic State fighters. While some traveled willingly, including three British schoolgirls known as the Bethnal Green trio, others were brought to Iraq and Syria as minors by their parents or family or forcefully. Some attempted to travel but were prevented.
Zehra Duman is an Australian-born Turkish woman who travelled to Daesh territory where she married a jihadi fighter. Born in Melbourne, Duman is reported to have been a friend of Tara Nettleton and Khaled Sharrouf, who travelled from Australia to Daesh territory, with their five children, in 2014. Duman's online recruiting activities have been the subject of scholarly attention.
Sharmeena Begum is a jihadi bride who left the United Kingdom to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in December 2014. Two months later, in February 2015, her school friends Amira Abase, Shamima Begum, and Kadiza Sultana joined her in occupied Syria. Begum is one of the youngest British teenagers to join ISIL.
Lisa Smith is a former Irish soldier who converted to Islam and later travelled to Syria during the Syrian Civil War to join the militant group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) during the Syrian Civil War. Born in Dundalk, she was a member of the Irish Army before transferring to the Irish Air Corps in 2011, but quit following her conversion to Islam. In 2015, following the breakdown of her marriage, she travelled to Syria to join ISIS. In 2019, she was captured and detained by the US forces in northern Syria. She was sentenced at the Irish Special Criminal Court on 22 July 2022 to 15 months in prison following her conviction on 30 May of membership of Daesh.
The al-Hawl refugee camp is a refugee camp on the southern outskirts of the town of al-Hawl in northern Syria, close to the Syria-Iraq border, which holds individuals displaced from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The camp is nominally controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) but according to the U.S. Government, much of the camp is run by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant who use the camp for indoctrination and recruitment purposes.
Begum v Home Secretary [2021] UKSC 7 is the short name of three closely connected proceedings considered together in the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, R v Special Immigration Appeals Commission; R v Secretary of State for the Home Department; and Begum v Secretary of State for the Home Department, concerning Shamima Begum, a woman born in the United Kingdom who at the age of 15 travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). Her intention to return to England in 2019 resulted in a public debate about the handling of returning jihadists.
Tania Joya is a British-American former jihadi and current counter-extremism activist. In 2013, she fled Syria after traveling there with husband John Georgelas to join the Islamic State. In 2022, she asserted that she had an extramarital romantic relationship with US Representative Van Taylor, who subsequently acknowledged having a relationship and dropped out of a Texas runoff election.
Tareena Shakil is a British former terrorist who is notable for being the first, and only, British woman convicted of having travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State. She was sentenced to six years' imprisonment in 2016 for willingly joining the terrorist group and for encouraging terrorist acts online. She had chosen to take her toddler son to Syria with her, and was later discovered to have made the one-year-old child pose with an AK-47 and wear Islamic State balaclavas for photographs. Both during and in the months before she travelled to join ISIS she posted content on social media supporting the Islamic State and justifying their actions, telling people to "take to arms". She messaged friends on the day she arrived in Syria saying that it was her 'responsibility' as a Muslim to kill 'murtadeen' apostates and that she wanted to die a martyr and carry out Jihad, yet would later claim that she had never agreed with killing anyone. Amongst other lies her trial judge concluded she made were her claims that she had not known that ISIS had committed atrocities before she went, her stories that she had been "kidnapped" to Syria, and what The Guardian described as her 'odd' claims that she had only put her child in an ISIS balaclava because the toddler "enjoyed wearing hats".
Mohammed Tasnime Akunjee is a British criminal law and human rights lawyer, and a political commentator. He specializes in terrorism and related fields, and his notable works includes the 2019 defamation case against Tommy Robinson, the Almondbury Community School bullying incident, and the citizenship deprivation case between the British government and Shamima Begum. In January 2024, he declared intention to run as an Independent candidate for a Member of Parliament for the newly drawn Bethnal Green and Stepney constituency in East London, though he did not do so in the general election that July.
Richard Simon Hermer, Baron Hermer, is a British barrister and life peer who has served as Attorney General for England and Wales and Advocate General for Northern Ireland since July 2024.
Shamima Begum - the schoolgirl who fled London to join the Islamic State group in Syria - has been stripped of her UK citizenship after expressing a desire to return.
She said Shamima had been 'upset' after a friend from her school left for Syria and said the family was hoping the girls had 'gone to go and bring her back'.
Shamima Begum is not a Bangladeshi citizen and there is "no question" of her being allowed into the country, Bangladesh's ministry of foreign affairs has said.
Shamima Begum is not a Bangladeshi citizen and cannot enter the country, its government has said, meaning the UK has made her stateless.
Following news of the boy's death, the shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, also criticised Javid's decision. She tweeted: 'It is against international law to make someone stateless, and now an innocent child has died as a result of a British woman being stripped of her citizenship. This is callous and inhumane.'
- (2) The Secretary of State may by order deprive a person of a citizenship status if the Secretary of State is satisfied that deprivation is conducive to the public good.
- ...
- (4) The Secretary of State may not make an order under subsection (2) if he is satisfied that the order would make a person stateless.
- (4A) But that does not prevent the Secretary of State from making an order under subsection (2) to deprive a person of a citizenship status if—
- ...
- (c) the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds for believing that the person is able, under the law of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom, to become a national of such a country or territory.
Ms. Begum's parents were born in Bangladesh, married there and remained Bangladeshi citizens. Her father came to the UK in 1975 but had since returned to Bangladesh. Ms Begum was born in the UK in 1999. She was a British citizen at birth because at that time one of her parents – her father – had Indefinite Leave to Remain.
A person born in the United Kingdom after commencement ... shall be a British citizen if at the time of the birth his father or mother is—
- (a) a British citizen; or
- (b) settled in the United Kingdom ...
Tasnime Akunjee, Attorney for Shamima Begum's family has traveled to SDF territory only to be briefly detained and told he could not see his client. He has been fighting the case of Shamima's repatriation to the UK and will discuss the moral and legal issues regarding a minor joining a terrorist group, issues of detaining an individual without charges, stripping citizenship, and the cruelties involved in not bringing her infant back to the UK for life-saving medical care.
