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.
As I understand it international law bans making a person stateless. Bangladeshi law says that any person born of Bangladeshi parents is automatically viewed as Bangladeshi / dual nationality until their twenty first birthday. Any time prior to that age you can apply for full or dual nationality but if you do not your Bangladeshi citizenship rights will lapse at 21. The UK’s legal argument is that as she was below this age when her UK citizenship was stripped she was not made stateless… they don’t care if Bangladesh takes her or not. They just had to prove that by revoking her UK citizenship the UK didn’t break international law.
That’s still skirting responsibility. Banking on a technicality. I’m pretty sure that this is not what the UN intended when they made such a provision. If the UK wants to disown her, they should be ready to accept responsibility for it too.
Yeah, maybe so, but regardless of my own personal view I just wanted to clear up the legal argument surrounding the case. The ethics and morality behind it is not really for the court to decide.