UK appeal hearing to rule on ‘IS bride’, A woman who lost her British citizenship after joining the Islamic State group in Syria will on Monday have her case reviewed, with her lawyers arguing that she was a “victim of trafficking”. Shamima Begum is one of hundreds of Europeans whose fate following the 2019 collapse of the so-called Islamic State caliphate has proved a thorny issue for governments.
UK appeal hearing to rule on ‘IS bride’
Begum, who was 15 at the time, traveled to Syria with two of her schoolmates in 2015, when she married an IS member and gave birth to three children, none of whom survived. She was later “discovered” by British journalists in a Syrian camp in February 2019 when significantly pregnant, and in her initial interviews, she seemed to show no regret.
She was declared a “IS bride” and had her British passport revoked by the UK, leaving her stuck and stateless in the Roj camp in Syria, which is controlled by Kurds. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) heard the case on Monday as a result of the Supreme Court’s ruling last year denying her entry to the UK to pursue her citizenship claim against the Home Office.
– ‘Trafficked by Canadian spy’ –
Tasnime Akunjee, the Begum family lawyer, told AFP the hearing would be centred around whether she was “considered a victim of trafficking — notably whether the then home secretary (Sajid Javid) turned his mind to those issues when making the decision to strip her of citizenship”.
According to a book written by journalist Richard Kerbaj and released earlier this year, a Syrian man who was providing information to the Canadian security services allegedly took Begum and her friends into Syria. Mohammed Al-Rashed is alleged to have been in charge of a vast IS network of people smugglers operating out of Turkey.
“It is now fairly well settled that she and her friends were transported across borders… by a Canadian asset of the Canadian security forces,” Akunjee said.
“The very definition of trafficking is pretty well established by that,” he added.
Despite her initial comments, Begum has since expressed remorse for her actions and sympathy for IS victims. In a documentary last year, she said that on arrival in Syria she quickly realised IS were “trapping people” to boost the caliphate’s numbers and “look good for the (propaganda) videos”. Some 900 people are estimated to have travelled from Britain to Syria and Iraq to join the IS group.
Of those, around 150 are believed to have been stripped of their citizenship. Human rights group Reprieve told AFP there were currently 20-25 British families, including 36 children, still in camps in Kurdish-controlled northeast Syria, where suspected relatives of IS fighters have been held. Other European nations have also been grappling with how to handle the return of their own nationals.
– Hostile public opinion –
Some countries, such as Germany and Belgium, have tried to carry out regular repatriation operations. Last month, Berlin said it had settled “almost all known cases” of German families in jihadist prison camps in Syria, claiming to have repatriated 76 minors as well as 26 women. According to Belgium’s federal prosecutor’s office, in mid-2022 there remained “a few women and a few children” in the Syrian camps.
However, France had only been doing repatriations on a case-by-case basis due to unfavorable public opinion. However, following criticism from the European Court of Human Rights, it has gained up speed recently. In two operations since July, Paris has repatriated 31 mothers and 75 children. There are reportedly still 69 women and 175 children from France in the camps. Begum had been “groomed online as a child and transported to Syria by a Canadian intelligence spy,” Reprieve head Maya Foa told AFP.
“Most British women in northeast Syria were groomed, coerced or deceived by ISIS, which operated as a sophisticated trafficking gang.” Many were young girls at the time and were “held against their will and subjected to sexual and other forms of exploitation”, she added.