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?

It’s rather interesting, where did she get western clothes from in the middle of a refugee camp?

Who has said she should ‘go free?’ If anything by refusing to try her for her alleged crimes you are endorsing letting her go free.

I really dislike when people make ridiculous comparisons because they know otherwise their argument is be the weak. So somebody says ‘yes she could be both a victim of crime and commit crimes, she should be tried for any alleged crimes in the country she belongs to’ and you know there is no good response to that so it’s ‘oh so you want to adopt her and cuddle up in bed with her? So you think she should get a FREE mansion and in ground pool?’

Their argument is very weak, that should read.

Here we go 🙄, that same old lazy argument pulling racism out of the bag when people can’t think of any other plausible reason. She’s a terrorist. No-one believes her bullshit, only the gullible amongst us. Stop making excuses for her. There really are no excuses for the disgusting things her ‘people’ have done.

What's she done @Livelovebehappy?

And what excuses did I make?

She chose to be travel to become a isis bride.
She knew what they were and what they did.
She's even said she agreed with the bombing of the Manchester arena.
She can stay where she is and rot.
She's a piece of terrorist shit!

She’s evil and a criminal. Not one shred of remorse for what she’s done. If ISIS had been successful in their endeavours she would still be sewing suicide bombers into their vests. Only bleeding heart liberals are taken in by her poor me narrative.

I don't think she is a victim. I don't want her back in the country as I think she is a danger. I agree she is a terrorist and might lure other people into terrorism. I'm sure I read even her own parents don't want her back.

So she/ her friends/ family ect should have been aware.

If only that worked. So many teenagers could be stopped from messing up their lives.

She was a victim and is a criminal. She should have been returned home and stood trial for her crimes. Stripping her of her nationality is outrageous and political.

Victim of Isis

Victim of the British government.

100% victim

I saw a YouTube video yesterday from gbtv...yes they have a right wing agenda, but an independent journalist interviewed captured yahidi (sp?) Women who state they saw her actively working for Isis, sowing suicide.vests, some claim she was involved with indoctrination and even picked women and girls to be raped. This is of course hearsay
Her husband was the master at arms for Isis so she would have known about the movement of weapons and potentially the use.

But the fact remains that she was 15 and at 15 I knew that any organisation which cuts the heads off of journalists for being journalists wasn't a great thing to join

Begum is a criminal, and also a dangerous terrorist, who happens to have a very good PR team working on her behalf. These PRs have successfully persuaded the BBC that they should provide her with a platform, at the license payers’ expense. How these PRs are funded, by whom, and for what purpose is unknown, but we can draw our own conclusions.

But the fact remains that she was 15 and at 15 I knew that any organisation which cuts the heads off of journalists for being journalists wasn't a great thing to join

That's all well and good if it applied to all 15yr olds and not just her.

The 15 yr old who ran off with an older man and maintained, still maintains, that she loves him and it's her choice is protected by the state, he goes to prison, and she is deemed unable to know her own mind because she's under age.

Why is she too young to make that choice even knowing that the government says she can't but this girl 'knew exactly what she was doing'. If a 15 yr old is deemed unable to make safe choices for themselves then that should apply to all 15yr olds.

Allthegoodnamesarechosen: the BBC has utter contempt and hatred for the bulk of the British population?? Is that those folk who watch Strictly? What on earth are you talking about? Or maybe I shouldn't ask.
I thought the podcast was very fair and the interviewer asked some tough questions. She was 15 when she made a very bad decision, which, in my opinion, she has paid for with the death of her three children and her incarceration in the camps. She is in a very vulnerable position there because violence has been committed against women who speak out.
What threat does she pose to British society? Because that is the reason they have deprived her of her British nationality.

She's brown and a Muslim, that automatically makes your guilty in the eyes of the tory government and a not insignificant portion of the UK population.

But to answer your Q she's certainly a victim and AFAIK she has never been convicted of any crime so is not a criminal (although in the UK innocent until proven guilty doesn't always apply to minorities).

The PM’s brown @Thebestwaytoscareatory. Hadn’t you noticed? So was the Home Secretary who revoked her citizenship. I think Javid might be Muslim too.

@Thebestwaytoscareatory but Jack Letts is white (and male) He had his citizenship removed. Sally Ann Jones was killed by a drone. Clearly there is more to it than that.

I think joining a terrorist organization is a crime and she has admitted to traveling to Syria to join ISIS. So we know she is at least guilty of that. Her age at the time and any grooming surely should just act in mitigation and not be a complete defence to her actions.

Lol, this is such a classic right-wing trope to roll out when they can't quite grasp the nuances and complexities of an issue.

No one on the left is falling for her poor me story. We are simply able to see past the right-wing narrative the government are trying to enforce for what it really is, an attack on someone's human rights.

Begum may well be an evil terrorist monster, but she's never been tried so is not a criminal in the eyes of the law. She certainly appears to have been radicalised and groomed, which would make her a victim too.

The sensible, legal, just, moral thing to do is to try hear for her alleged crime(s) and punish her if found guilty. Simply stripping her of her citizenship is not only an appalling thing to do but sets a dangerous presedent. Today it's an alleged Islamic terrorist being stripped of their citizenship, tomorrow it's a young Irish boy/girl who expresses dissident republican views online, next month it's anyone who criticises the government. Either justice is blind and applied equally to all or it is not justice at all and just a tool of government control.

You might laugh at that and say don't be so ridiculous, that'll never happen, but fascism, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism don't just spring up one day with a grand gesture, they take hold gradually through the incessant and relentless erosion of rights and control over many years.

Only one side here are being taken in by a narrative and it's not the 'bleeding heart liberals'.

Yes, and both have been subject to pretty vile racist/bigoted comments from sections of the British public.

Just because a government contains politicians who are brown and Muslim doesn't mean thar government can't be prejudiced towards other brown/Muslim people.

Field Marshal Erhard Milch and
General der Flieger Helmuth Wilberg were both Jews but that didn't stop the Nazis party from being evil incarnate.

*and before anyone has a hissy fit I am not comparing the tories to the nazis here.

But why should Syria have to have her? Would you be happy if someone came from Syria to here, did something criminal and they said “Tell you what, you keep them. We don’t want them back thanks. And we say they aren’t Syrian now anyway so they can’t come back. All yours...” Even more so if there were so many of them there was a whole campful? Just think about it, a whole campful of potentially very dangerous people who don’t come from the UK, but their countries have denied them citizenship so there’s nowhere for them to go. All living in, say, Kent. Would you be happy? I doubt it. But Syria are supposed to be fine with it!

Maybe she could get citizenship for Bangladesh. But surely if someone travelled to join Isis from Bangladesh and Bangladesh then refused to allow them to return saying “They need to go to Britain” we’d not be happy with that either.

I get people don’t want her here but this is not Syria’s problem. Except we are making it Syria’s problem. “As long as she’s not here” isn’t good enough. If she is not to be in the country she was born in and brought up in then where should she be that doesn’t involve dumping the expense on someone else?

What I massively worry about is the future. All these people wedged in nightmarish conditions in camps, including children. It’s hardly going to make them feel favourable to western countries and cultures is it? I worry that it is actually just a breeding ground for more resentment and future terror attacks.

What benefit could there possibly be in giving her her British citizenship back again? It'd just send out the wrong message to others, that you can go the middle-east, swear allegiance to ISIS, engage in terrorism and then return home when it all goes wrong.

There is zero evidence that she did anything in ISIS other than stay home and have 3 babies and 2 miscarriages

Though there are endless claims I wasn't aware there's any actual evidence of the alleged babies and miscarriages? Happy to be corrected on this if any exists though

Personally I believe she can be both a criminal and a victim, but mostly I worry that she'd be a security threat to the wider public - a view the security services (who know much more then we do) appear to share

Could be Both. They aren't mutually exclusive states.

I don't think UK should wash hands of her, either way. If she's a threat to other humans, UK should own up to being responsible controllers of the hazard she presents, rather than trust Syria / refugee camps / elsewhere to do it.

Criminal. I knew what I was doing at 15 & whether it was right or wrong.
Terrorist.
Plus, what @Florenz says above.

Victim. She was a child.

15 year olds sometimes get caught up in inappropriate things and usually the law works to protect them.