Category Archives: Shamima Begum

Ministers ignore pleas to honour vow and bring ‘innocents’ back from Syria

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After last week’s Shamima Begum ruling, Home Office stays silent on rescue of minors from camps in the north-west of the country

The Home Office has been accused of “alarming inaction” after making no apparent attempt to bring back any British children from Syria for the past eight months despite pledges of help from ministers.

The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, announced last October that “unaccompanied minors or orphans” in Syria could be returned to Britain. After three orphans returned in November, he hailed the move as “the right thing to do”. He added: “These innocent, orphaned children should never have been subjected to the horrors of war.”

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Shamima Begum: how the case developed

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Twenty-year-old has won right to return to UK from Syria to challenge citizenship decision

The case of Shamima Begum, the now 20-year-old woman who fled to Syria to join Islamic State as a child, has sparked fierce debate over how the UK should deal with “foreign fighters”.

Opponents of her return say she is a threat to the country’s security and must live with the consequences of her actions, while critics of her exile say greater human rights principles are at play, and the UK must not shirk its responsibility to administer justice for any alleged crimes she may have committed.

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Shamima Begum wins right to return to UK to challenge citizenship decision

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Appeal court partially overturns earlier ruling that backed Home Office

Shamima Begum, the 20-year-old woman who left east London as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State, should be allowed to return to the UK to challenge the Home Office’s decision to revoke her British citizenship in person.

The court of appeal partially overturned an earlier ruling by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) this year, which held that she had not been illegally rendered stateless while she was in Syria because she was entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship.

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Shamima Begum’s UK citizenship should be restored, court told

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Woman who fled as schoolgirl to join Isis cannot fight fair appeal from Syria, lawyers say

Shamima Begum, the woman who left Britain as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State, cannot effectively challenge the government’s decision to deprive her of British citizenship while she is in a detention camp in northern Syria, the court of appeal has been told.

At the start of a two-day online hearing, her lawyers challenged a ruling by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) this year that she has not been rendered stateless because she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship.

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This government has failed Shamima Begum | Letter

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The woman who travelled to Syria as a teenager was born and radicalised in this country, writes Anish Kapoor, and the decision to strip her of her citizenship is shameful

I am saddened and appalled to hear of the British government’s refusal to allow Shamima Begum the right to return to Britain, the country of her birth. This decision is shameful and politically motivated (Begum loses first stage of fight to be British citizen, 8 February). The home secretary, Priti Patel, declared in advance of the recent Special Immigration Appeals Commission judgment that Shamima would never be allowed back into the UK.

The land where she was born and bred radicalised her and ultimately failed her. Lest we forget, Shamima left the UK when she was 15, after she had been extensively groomed under the noses of the very authorities tasked to protect her.

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Red Cross criticises UK for stripping Isis recruits of citizenship

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Humanitarian organisation says policy is not helping bring clarity or peace to Syria

The head of the international Red Cross has sharply criticised Britain’s policy of stripping the citizenship of people held in Syria after the fall of Islamic State, saying it is “not conducive” to long-term peace in the region.

Related: Rescue of all 60 children of the ‘caliphate’ urged as winter nears

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Britain makes move to bring home Isis children stranded in Syria

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Whitehall sources are working with local agencies to bring back minors born to Islamic State fighters

British officials have taken the first steps to repatriate children stranded in Syria by liaising directly with agencies on the ground to identify unaccompanied minors for “safe passage” back to the UK.

Whitehall sources have confirmed they are working with “various agencies” in north-east Syria – believed to include the International Committee of the Red Cross – to kickstart the process of transferring children of British parents linked to Islamic State back to the UK.

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Begum lawyer says legal ploy could stop her return to Britain

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Citizenship appeal for UK Isis teenager being ‘deliberately delayed’

Shamima Begum’s attempt to overturn the decision to revoke her UK citizenship is being deliberately delayed, according to her lawyers, to give police time to charge the former Islamic State member with a terrorism offence.

Almost six months have passed since Begum lodged an appeal against the decision, by the former home secretary, Sajid Javid. Yet the 19-year-old, who joined Isis aged 15 and remains in Syria, is still waiting for a date to be set with the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), which adjudicates on cases where the home secretary has revoked someone’s nationality on grounds of national security.

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Shamima Begum would face death penalty in Bangladesh, says minister

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Family lawyer says chances of Begum being sent to country are ‘vanishingly remote’

Shamima Begum could face the death penalty for involvement in terrorism if she goes to Bangladesh, the country’s foreign minister has said.

However, her family’s lawyer said the chances of her being sent to her parents’ country of origin were “vanishingly remote”.

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Anish Kapoor: ‘If I was a young Muslim, would I feel angry enough to join Isis? I would at least think about it’

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Britain has gone through the looking glass and the artist’s new show follows it into the abyss. He talks about the upsurge in racism, fighting for Shamima Begum – and his clash with France’s president

At 7.30 on the morning after Britain voted to leave the European Union, Anish Kapoor left his London flat for an appointment with his analyst. On the street, he heard two men talking. “Bet he doesn’t even speak English,” said one. “I turned around and they were talking about me. I was so furious.”

Sir Anish Mikhail Kapoor, CBE, RA, the 65-year-old, Turner prize-winning, Mumbai-born British-Indian artist, who has lived in London since the early 1970s and (though this is hardly the point) speaks better English than most of his countrymen, had woken up in a new land. “Since then permission has been given for difference, rather than being celebrated, to be undermined.”

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Two more women held in Syrian camps ‘stripped of British citizenship’

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Reema and Zara Iqbal – whose husbands died fighting for Isis – said to have five children between them

Two more British women who are being held in Syrian camps with their young children have reportedly had their citizenship removed.

The move comes as the home secretary, Sajid Javid, faces increasing criticism over the case of Shamima Begum, the 19-year-old Londoner who was stripped of her British citizenship on his orders, after the death of her three-week-old son.

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Shamima Begum: Sajid Javid labelled ‘moral coward’ over baby death

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Former DPP accuses home secretary of treating UK like a ‘banana republic’ over decision to strip Isis bride of citizenship

Syrian camps: vulnerable children of Isis ignored by the outside world

Sajid Javid has been accused of moral cowardice and “treating the UK as a banana republic” in pursuit of his leadership ambitions following the death of Jarrah, the three-week-old son of Isis bride Shamima Begum.

A Church of England bishop and a former director of public prosecutions led the chorus of outrage directed at the home secretary as demand grew for him to review his controversial decision to strip the 19-year-old of British citizenship – a move that left her stateless and her baby in legal limbo.

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Shamima Begum baby death ‘a stain on conscience of UK government’

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Sajid Javid accused of appeasing populists by ordering UK citizenship to be revoked

The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has come under fire for his decision to revoke the British citizenship of Shamima Begum, whose baby son has died in a Syrian refugee camp.

Begum, 19, left the UK in 2015 with two school friends to join Islamic State in Syria and said last month she wanted to return home. But Javid insisted he would do all in his power to prevent her coming back and ordered her citizenship to be revoked.

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Shamima Begum: baby son dies in Syrian refugee camp

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Three-week-old infant is the third child the teenager from east London has lost

The newborn son of Shamima Begum has died in a Syrian refugee camp. The baby boy, named Jarrah, was buried on Friday, three weeks after the east London teenager turned Islamic State devotee gave birth.

A Kurdish intelligence official said the infant had been taken to hospital in al-Roj camp in north-eastern Syria with breathing difficulties several times in the past week. A friend of Begum said “the baby turned blue and was cold” before being rushed to a clinic inside the camp. Jarrah is understood to have been buried along with two other children who were burned in a fire on Thursday night.

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Shamima Begum moved from Syria camp after threats, says lawyer

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Nineteen-year-old Briton and newborn son relocated due to ‘safety concerns’

Shamima Begum and her newborn baby have been moved from a Syrian refugee camp after threats were made against them, according to her family’s lawyer.

The 19-year-old and her son were moved from the Al-Hol camp in the north of the country due to “safety concerns around her and her baby”, Tasnime Akunjee said.

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Met police kept families of Isis schoolgirls ‘in the dark’

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Shamima Begum and the other Bethnal Green girls who travelled to Syria could have been stopped, their parents say

The families of a group of Bethnal Green schoolgirls who went to Syria to join Islamic State have accused the Metropolitan police of Islamophobia over its handling of their cases.

The relatives – including those of Shamima Begum, the 19-year-old whose UK citizenship was revoked by the home secretary last week – were treated as suspects and were not privy to intelligence that may have prevented three of the eight girls reaching Syria, according to lawyers, a former senior Scotland Yard officer and community sources.

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Shamima Begum: I am willing to change to keep British citizenship

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Nineteen-year-old who joined Isis asks UK to show ‘a bit more mercy’ in assessing her case

Shamima Begum has said she is “willing to change”, as she issued a plea to the UK government for “mercy” after the home secretary moved to strip her of her British nationality.

The British-born 19-year-old, who travelled from east London to Syria to join Islamic State in 2015, wants to return from Syria because her newborn son is unwell, and she does not wish to allow him to return to the UK alone.

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What is the truth about Shamima Begum’s citizenship status?

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Experts split over whether Sajid Javid’s move to revoke her UK citizenship is legal

According to the UK government, she is no longer a British citizen. The Home Office wrote to Begum’s parents on 19 February saying they had made the order to remove her citizenship that day.

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Shamima Begum’s family hope to bring her baby to UK

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Lawyer for family of 19-year-old who joined Isis in Syria is to ask her consent for plan

The family of Shamima Begum are exploring legal and practical options to bring her baby son to the UK without her while she embarks on the potentially lengthy appeal against the removal of her British citizenship, the Guardian has learned.

The lawyer representing the 19-year-old’s family is planning to travel to the refugee camp in Syria where she is living “as soon as possible” to set in motion the legal appeal process, and to ask her consent to bring her newborn son back to Britain while she awaits a resolution of her legally tangled case.

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Shamima Begum will not be allowed here, says Bangladesh

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Country at odds with UK over decision to strip 19-year-old of British citizenship

Shamima Begum is not a Bangladeshi citizen and there is “no question” of her being allowed into Bangladesh, the country’s ministry of foreign affairs has insisted, setting up a clash with the UK after Sajid Javid’s move to strip the teenager of her UK citizenship.

“The government of Bangladesh is deeply concerned that [Begum] has been erroneously identified as a holder of dual citizenship,” Shahriar Alam, the state minister of foreign affairs, said in a statement issued to the Guardian, adding that his government had learned of Britain’s intention to cancel her citizenship rights from media reports.

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