A woman who left the United Kingdom to join ISIS at the age of 15 has lost her Court of Appeal challenge over the decision to remove her British citizenship.
Shamima Begum flew to Syria in 2015 with two school friends to join the terror group. While there, she married an ISIS fighter and spent several years living in Raqqa.
Begum then reappeared in al-Hawl, a Syrian refugee camp, in 2019. She made international headlines as an “ISIS bride” after pleading with the UK government to be allowed to return to her home country for the birth of her son.
Then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid removed her British citizenship in February that year, and Begum’s newborn son died in a Syrian refugee camp the following month. She told UK media she had two other children prior to that baby, who also died in Syria during infancy.
She was 15 when she was trafficked to Syria by a people smuggler who turned out to be a Canadian asset.
We have age of consent laws for a good reason.
15 year olds have underdeveloped brains and sometimes make shit decisions, that’s why we don’t legally enable them to make decisions about stuff like this. This kid got groomed.
I mean, that’s a fair argument… but she went off to join bloody isis. You don’t have to be too old to know what the hell isis is do and have done. I agree one mistake at 15 having such huge consequences is pretty bad… but it’s not like she stole her parents car and went on a joyride, she joined bloody terrorists. That’s gonna stick no matter how old you get because it’s insane. I do agree rendering her stateless is our fault and she should probably stay a citizen for that reason alone but she doesn’t deserve to move beyond the stigma of what she did even if she was very young when she did.
@emax_gomax yeah what she did was really bad, and I think she needs jail and probably the really intense rehab they do for child soldiers.
But it should be in the UK.
Many many of the kids in DRC and Sierra Leone who get groomed or kidnapped into child soldier armies have committed war crimes. The social stigma they carry afterwards is a big problem and if they don’t get proper rehab they just end up in more violence.
So I agree there are no easy answers. But the nation which produced the criminal should be the one who deals with it not dump it onto others.
As I said, it fucking sucks - but I’d rather see Syrians who were caught in the middle of a war through no action of their own prioritized. I don’t know this woman and hope she can raise her family in peace - but I’d rather focus on locals first.
@xmunk it’s not really a choice between those two things tho.
Bit of a cop out, the reality is that Syrians have to pay to clothe, feed, and securely house someone who was groomed and radicalized in Britain.
Exporting your criminals because you’d rather import worthier citizens isn’t a moral thing to do in my opinion.
It’s basically taking advantage of the fact that Syrians are in no shape to expel the radicalized Westerners who came over there to kill them.