LONDON (AP) – A woman who traveled to Syria as a teenager to join the Islamic State group has lost her appeal against the British government’s decision to strip her of British citizenship.
Shamima Begum, now 24, was 15 when she and two other girls fled London in February 2015 to marry IS fighters in Syria. At the time, the group’s online recruitment program was luring many impressionable young people into its self-proclaimed caliphate. . Begum married a Dutch man fighting for IS, and she had three children, all of whom died.
Shortly after she surfaced in a Syrian refugee camp in 2019, authorities revoked her British citizenship on national security grounds.
UK strips citizenship of ‘unrepentant’ ISIS jihadist bride Shamima Begum https://t.co/U2LOWbmL8C
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 20, 2019
Her lawyers applied to the Court of Appeal to overturn the decision, but the Home Office opposed the challenge.
All three judges dismissed her case.
“It can be said that the sentence in Ms. Begum’s case was harsh,” Chief Justice Sue Kerr said in delivering the verdict. “You could argue that Ms. Begum herself is the cause of your misfortune. But this court is not here to decide which view it agrees with or disagrees with.”
She concluded that the court’s only task was to assess whether the decision to strip Ms. Begum of her citizenship was unlawful.
“As this was not the case, Ms. Begum’s appeal is dismissed,” the judge added.
Mr Kerr said any debate over the outcome of the unanimous judgment, which could include an appeal to the UK Supreme Court, would be adjourned for seven days.
Begum, who remains in a Syrian refugee camp, said a decision by then British Home Secretary Sajid Javid made her stateless and that she should have been treated as a child trafficking victim rather than a security risk. insisted.
The British government claimed she could obtain a Bangladeshi passport based on family ties. However, Ms Begum’s family claimed that she was from the UK and that she had never held a Bangladeshi passport.
