There is some serious misunderstanding of the way things work in a war zone and/or a country where there is no consular access. And indeed if the role many IS fighter’s wives played in the atrocities committed.
Of course it is sad this baby died, a tragedy for his parents and, indeed, for his wider family. Just like the many innocent lives that have been lost in the region. Every one a tragedy.
However that does not change the fact that this baby died because he was born in a refugee camp, with poor living conditions and little access to medical care. That was not the fault of the UK, but down to his parents’ choices in life. He was a casualty of the situation in that region, like so many others.
The UK does not have “blood on our hands” because there was no practical way to return them even if shamima’s Citizenship had not been stripped the process to return her wouldn’t ha e been quick enough to save him.
As there is no consular access, there is no formal way to organise the easy movement (I.e. via usual modes of transport and especially if that involves travel through another, or multiple, countries). There would need to be documentation for both mother and baby- you cannot simply expect the border laws of other countries to be waved aside because we demand it.
The only alternative is to send in a military or diplomatic mission to retrieve them and fly them directly back to the UK. That puts diplomatic and military personnel at risk, given the region they are entering. Not only that, it then sets a precedent that the UK will go and retrieve citizens wherever they are in the world (even if they have knowingly gone somewhere with no consular access), no matter the reason they are there and no matter the risk posed to those who go into retrieve them. Which would be an absolutely ludicrous thing to do.
There is no way to extradite her. There is a legal process- court ordered and mandated, and only with countries with whom we have an extradition treaty. The UK can’t simply extradite someone because we decide we want to, it simply does not work like that. Also requires a functioning judicial/criminal justice and policing system in the country you are seeking to extradite someone from. Seems unlikely in a refugee camp in the region she is in. The UK cannot just walk into that camp and arrest her to bring her back to the UK either because we have no jurisdiction in that camp.
That is not to say that I think it was right to remove shamima begum’s citizenship- I think we should have allowed her back if she had found a way to do so and investigated her when she arrived, with a view to prosecution if appropriate. She is our problem to manage, not the right thing to do to dump our problem on another country like Bangladesh. Although, i can’t say i’m delighted at the thought of someone with her beliefs back in our midst and no doubt the tax payer will end up supporting her one way or another for the rest of her life. But it does remain our problem to sort.
I also think there is some naïveté about the role of women in IS. Wives of IS fighters were very often involved in terrible acts of cruelty towards others- including innocent women and children. Look at the reports from the Yazedi women and all those others kept as slaves, bought and sold like possessions (and profitable business for IS). These people, including children, were Very frequently brutally beaten, systematically raped, often tortured and not infrequently murdered. We have no way of knowing whether Shamima was party to any of that and are highly unlikely ever to know as there will never be credible evidence either way given where and with whom she was living. And she will always say she was just a housewife, whatever the truth is. But let’s not get too carried away with sympathy- yes, losing her baby was an awful thing to happen to any mother- but the regime she supported is responsible for many atrocities too and is the reason many other mothers have lost their babies. She may even have been involved in some of those atrocities for all we know.