Is Shamima Begum a victim or a criminal?

[ShamimaBegu]

Just listened to the podcasts about Shamima Begum. How can Shamima Begum not be viewed as a victim of grooming and sex trafficking? How on earth would a 15 year old got to Syria without adults making it happen?
She was married off and became pregnant on multiple occasions. She surely is as much a victim as a criminal?

The thing with this is she said this two days after giving birth. She’d had a difficult journey after the fall of the city she was living in, while heavily pregnant. She was in a camp in difficult conditions surrounded by people who killed you if you said the wrong thing. One account is of a woman who’d been murdered and dumped in a septic tank. A male journalist tracked her down and she said those things - I’m not sure if I’d have denounced ISIS at that point. Especially if I was trying to protect my newborn.

Listen to later interviews- she does condemn those things.

Victim. She's been treated very badly imo.

By everyone, ever.

Any decision made on national security in this country is of course based on keeping myself my kids and wider public safe . It was said if we knew , we would understand .
This case has been to court evidence has been submitted some of that evidence has not been made public ,her appeal was denied so at this moment she’s not welcome back in the UK this is a decision I believe would not of been taken lightly and has not been made by one person alone .
So I’m going to stick to my view this decision was made in the interest of safety in the UK . It’s just my opinion as you are entitled to yours none of which will have any bearing on what happens to her .

And I’m not going to dig into why she’s safer being over there then over here . Il leave that to national security.

As I understand it though the court ruling was nothing to do with whether the decision was the right one. It didn’t look at evidence of her crimes etc. It was simply about whether the Home Secretary is legally allowed to strip her of her citizenship rights. Not whether it was a good decision to do so. It’s not confirmation or denial of what she has or hasn’t done so doesn’t actually give us any more information. Just because it is legal doesn’t make it morally right. And I think the concluding statement had a qualifier on it to this effect.

And the Kurdish people who run the camp where we want to leave her are asking for help. What happens if they simply decide they don’t want to run the camps any more? What do we do then?

So what would be the evidence given in court that can’t be made public be about?

oh bless. what a lovely sweet naive view of the world

Yes, I'm sure that in a refugee camp where loads of other people have escaped from, in a poor country who are pissed off that we won't take back our citizens, they are keeping a close eye on her.

I don’t know. I’ll google in a bit but I’m sure the end of the podcast about her linked to up thread mentioned this. Just sorting dinner though!!

Well while she’s still appealing, I’m pretty safe in the knowledge she will stay where she is . From the interviews she’s doing she’s still there.

and what is her incentive to stay if the appeal fails? Honestly I do despair at this government. She's our problem and will become much more dangerous the longer she is left out there. Look at the US and Sam Elhassani. They brought her back, put her on trial, put her in prison.

While loads of people would prefer she was somewhere else it doesn’t answer the issue of why we think it is morally ok to make another country responsible for
someone born here.
Woild we be happy if other countries did it to us or would we want to deport an individual back to where they were born? If the answer is we would want to deport them, then we need to be careful of setting a precedent. Other countries could well say “They committed a crime in your country. You keep them. We are revoking their citizenship and they can’t come here. They can rot in your country - it’s your problem now.” If we don’t want that we need to tread carefully.

Yes good point
but I do believe more was said in court and the decision wasn’t taken lightly. I really don’t know enough about the case . It’s been done in line with national security .
Like the other case Jack the terrorist, I’m not sure how’s his case is going , If Canada have to now take him back . This case isn’t done yet so we will have to see.
I mean in a lot of cases criminals are brought back and tried here and police make a big effort in bringing them back , but as there’s info being kept private here, I don’t know.

That's because a 15-yo engaging in sex with an older man is hurting no one but themselves.

A 15 yo supporting a terrorist organisation is hurting a lot of people.

There may be mitigating circumstances but personal responsibility does start somewhere, when your decisions hurt others.

She joined a terrorist organisation. Whether she had a supporting role or a more active one doesn't change that she was working for them. She supported their goals and their methods. So she shouldn't go free.

As for who should take custody of her, there is precedent for criminals being detained in the country where they committed their crimes. I don't necessarily think she should be repatriated even if she had retained her citizenship. There are foreign nationals in UK prisons too.

I do think the children should be removed from the camps (with or without the mothers' consent) and sent to their biological grand-parents /aunts/uncles/cousins if any would have them, or to social services if not. If Shamima's baby had been removed he'd potentially still be alive. In her place I'd have begged for him to be allowed either to the UK or the Netherlands, even if I had to stay behind. Though to be fair there wasn't a lot of time to consider any such application even if she'd made one (which I don't believe she did).

Shipping off elsewhere someone who committed crimes in the UK is completely different from someone who left and committed crimes in other countries. A quick google tells me that 2335 UK nationals are imprisoned abroad so that's hardly a new concept, even if she had kept her citizenship.

Of course she is both, unfortunately for her that's not a valid defence.

Many rapists were victims of sexual abuse in the past, it doesn't excuse their actions.

Many murderers were victims of abuse in some capacity, or witnessed violence in their childhood or in their past. Behaviours such as these are hugely disproportionately down to learned behaviours, but this cannot and should not be used as a defence for committing crimes later on in life. We will never know for sure what she did, or what she was directly involved with. However, she didn't escape at the first opportunity or when she realised what it was she had gotten herself into. Instead she stayed and created a family and birthed multiple children into a life of radicalism. Weighing all this up, she's simply too much of flight risk to allow back into this country.

I think what bothers me with this, is that a 15 year old travelled to an airport, boarded and aircraft and travelled to the Middle East by herself. That's no easy feat, especially for a 15 year old so it clearly took some sort of planning on her part. It's not something you just accidentally do.

However, saying that, I do think she is a victim in the sense that 15 year olds are not mature, they make stupid decisions and do not think of consequences. I know my 16 year old is currently in the mind set of 'it won't happen to me' or 'I can handle it' which is perhaps the mindset Shamima had.

What she did though was still very serious. Even just being involved with a terrorist organisation is a crime so whether she actually harmed anyone or not, she still committed a crime that affected the national security.

I think she should be allowed back but on the basis that she is placed on remand until trial.

You're missing the point of what I'm saying (and I've probably worded it badly). I am not suggesting she shouldn't be punished at all. The question was around whether she's a victim or criminal. She is clearly both, she would have been groomed IMO, thats the bit I'm questioning . Quite rightly that makes little difference in the eyes of the law, I have not said otherwise but we cant pick and choose whether 15 yos are old enough to have 100% sound judgement or not. We all know even vulnerable adults are groomed by extremists.

We do treat children found guilty of murder differently than an adult who commits the same crime, an u18 wouldn't even be named before a trial and Begum has not been found guilty of anything at all.

For me, she is as British as Sunak, Javid, Johnson or Braverman, all of whom could claim citizenship else where, so she should be here in the UK, subjected to the UK's justice system.

But the biggest reason she should be here is equality, so many male ISIS fighters have been allowed back into the UK, without even a trial, so why is a female, who as far as we know never fought for ISIS (based on the number of pregnancies she had, was used for sex) being treated so very differently?

We do treat children found guilty of murder differently than an adult who commits the same crime, an u18 wouldn't even be named before a trial and Begum has not been found guilty of anything at all.

She wasn't under 18 when she chose to raise children into that world though. She defends a lot of ISIS actions; and does so as an adult.

Presumably they are detained after trials in that country. There has been no trial there, only an announcement from the UK that we aren’t having her back.
So Syria haven’t said “we’re keeping her in prison because we’ve found this to be necessary.” They’re keeping her because we’ve said “Not our problem- you deal with it. We don’t want her.” Not the same as most other UK nationals detained abroad.
So again. Why do we think that’s ok? Dumping our problem on another country? What do we do if they say no, not doing this any more? Do we really think this is keeping us safer? Because if you listen to people who been to those camps they are described as ticking time bombs. People kept in terrible conditions with resentment festering. It leaves it wide open for a group like ISIS to step in and say “See - the west is bad. They didn’t care. They left you to rot. They left the children in here to rot. We can offer you this instead…”

She was 15 when she went to Syria, married within 10 days, all her 3 children died shortly after birth, her youngest child died when she was 19, so i expect she had her first at 16 or 17?

I don't know about you but that would send many women into severe depression.

I don't doubt at all she did what many say she did but thats not the point, she is a UK citizen and should face trial in the UK, she is our responsibility & why was she treated differently to male ISIS fighters allowed to return here and with no trial?

She’s in a camp full of ISIS where non believers, including women, are murdered regularly. She may be afraid to completely denounce them. The reason so many ISIS members have been allowed back and not her is she was on TV a lot for being a young girl. Then pissed everyone off by not sounding like a ‘proper’ victim.

Another thing which reflects shockingly on us as a nation:

If she was not eligble for a Bangladesh passport, then it would have been illegal to strip her of her British citzenship.

So we are running a 2 tier system. If your parents were born elsewhere, so technically you are entitled to a passport from another country, then obviously you are not properly British. Not British enough to belong enough for us to deal with you.

She was born and brought up here. She has never lived in Bangladesh. She is a full British citizen - except she isn't

My kids are half Dutch. They were born and brought up here. Technically that means they are entitled to hold a Dutch passport.

So my kids are second class British citzens. Not protected fully under British law, and not entitled full to all the benefits and responsibilities of being British, (including that she needs to stand trial here) because at any point, the Home secretary can turn round and say - nope, stripping you of your citizenship.
We know it is legal, it is just massively immoral, and it has huge implications for all the thousand of Brits who naively thought they held British citizenship.

Deep rooted racism at its worst.