To feel sorry for Shamima Begum?

[EWAS]

I do, I’m afraid. I think she should be able to come home. She was 15! Have any men been stripped of their citizenship that we know about?

Absolutely agree. I don't feel sorry for her in the least I'm afraid.

FFS - quoting Martin Niemöller is perhaps the inane and misplaced argument that you could use. She joined a group that was a religious fascist movement attempting to eradicate other communities and establish a dictatorship. ISIS membership is not equivalent to being a persecuted Communist, Socialist, trade unionist or Jew. Unless you are equating being one of those to joining a group which took Yazidi women and kids into sexual slavery, massacred their men and killed countless others. Pick up a book or read the news.

But she should be brought back because she's our responsibility and we are making her (and others like her) someone else's problem. Bringing her and those like her back is not about them but the people and communities they are being dumped on - in a region our country played a big role in destabilising. She's our rubbish we should be responsible for her. Stripping citizenship is not an appropriate legal punishment and certainly not when it's done for political expediency.

This sums it up. It is not about whether Shamima Begum is entitled to 'sympathy':
'Any British person who has a foreign-born parent will feel their status is more precarious after the court of appeal decision'

The Shamima Begum ruling proves it: some UK citizens are less equal than others | Zoe Williams | The Guardian'

'The first is the idea that Begum cannot return because she poses too great a threat to national security. The notion that the assembled forces of British justice and policing are no match for one 24-year-old, who is easily recognisable and whose whereabouts can presumably be known for the rest of her life, would represent an incompetence so sweeping as to amount to an abnegation of the state’s duty: if it cannot keep us safe from Begum, how would it fare against an adversary who hadn’t renounced fundamentalism and whose identity is not yet known?'

@FuzzyManul nobody is campaigning to get them out

Just this loser

Why is there no sympathy for the others who had their citizenship taken away?

This is really insulting to the actual victims of trafficking - who end up in these situations against their will. She went off her own volition to join an organisation she KNEW commited acts of terror and murder, in a country they controlled. How on earth is that the same as girls who are kidnapped or promised a job in a first world country like the US or UK or who's parents sell them for profit.

You really think the average 15 year old when asked to join a group that kills and mutilates, but will love and care for them is going to say 'yes please, that sounds much better than my comfortable life in zone 1 east london living with my family in my cultural community". Isn't that more likely the decision of a sociopath?

Funny she didn't want to join Red Cross or Unesco to help out in Syria hey. Lots of adverts on the telly and public transport asking for volunteers and help.

Ah. I see the point you were trying to make. It wasn't clear in your original post.

I feel sympathy up to a point as there are a lot worse folk than her allowed in the country and go on to commit horrific crimes, but still not convinced she should be allowed back in. I don't think she would keep quiet either.

Sajid Javid has said if the public knew what MI5 did they wouldn’t want her returned to the UK either. There is more to this than just a poor 15 year old who was led astray.

She was 15 when she was groomed and left the UK was she not?

A child.

She might be an adult now but when she made that initial decision she was a child and vulnerable. And that should absolutely be taken into account.

Many women do awful things when in exploitation in order to survive. What makes you think she's any different than any other young woman who's been targeted, groomed and exploited?

I think too many people seem to need a black and white good guy bad guy situation.

This was a British born child who grew up feeling so alienated from the country she grew up in that she became a target, was groomed and radicalised.

It's far easier to demonise her than to take a good look around and try to understand how that happened because it sure as shit didn't happen in isolation.

Is she a victim?
Yes.
Is she a perpetrator?
Yes.
Has she done horrendous things?
Yes.
Have horrendous things been done to her?
Yes.

She is more like a victim of a brainwashing cult than a blood thirsty monster. When we think of cults we understand brainwashing and deprogramming but when it comes to this young woman there appears to be a desperate need to see her as a monster rather than a product of her childhood and the grooming she suffered and look back and see the teenager who was utterly failed by everyone around her.

But here she is now, an adult, no doubt deeply psychologically damaged and just because she's brown and her parents weren't born in the UK doesn't mean she isn't Britain's responsibility. She needs to be sent back here, assessed and dealt with in the most appropriate way.

And if people want to deny there's a racist undertone to the general public's view of her they're delusional.

Just for the record, Jewish people tend to commit fewer crimes (proportionately to their population in a country) than individuals of other faiths (including Islam and Christianity) and of no faith at all.

How realistically is she any kind of threat to the UK? Where is ISIS now? Why is it acceptable for the UK to ignore international law and make her stateless? Whatever she has done or not done - and a great deal of that is speculation and hearsay- she is entitled to be treated with justice and compassion as any of our citizens should be.This is one of the key features that differentiates the UK from dodgy third world regimes, and indeed the ISIS caliphate itself.

@Lavender14 What makes you think she was targeted groomed and exploited..... she followed her bestie out there....

Because MI5 consider her a risk. If she was just a poor young girl they’d not be bothered but they think she’s a serious risk to security.

Wasn’t the female murderer of Brianna ghey also a vulnerable child? I don’t remember much sympathy for her. She was also on line a lot, was she ‘groomed’ I don’t know, but she was a violent sadistic killer at 15 and I don’t hear much sympathy for her. She was locked up for 20 years and held accountable for actions made when 15.

admittedly she wasn’t deprived of citizenship, but she was held fully accountable for her choices and actions.

I do have sympathy - my daughter is 15, she doesn’t have the maturity of an adult and this girl was groomed 100%

I know! Some people's minds are so open that their brains fell out a long time ago.

@OodlesPoodle funnily enough that's how grooming works. It makes something deeply inappropriate seem like the good option like running away with an older man or joining a cult etc etc etc. And funny the red Cross and unesco weren't trying to groom children online.

This child to woman was trapped in a propaganda machine for years and years of her formative youth.

Do you think this makes her less dangerous?

I think it makes her more so.

Why do you think she felt alienated?? Have you been to the area she lived in?? I'm South Asian but not Bangladeshi and I feel out of place as it's majority Bangladeshi. It's probably one of the largest Bangladeshi communities outside Bangladesh. Why would she feel more at home in Syria with Isis?? What did they offer that her Bangla community at home didn't?

But she's 24 now and totally ok seeing a journalists severed head tossed in a rubbish bin..... she's cool with that, are you??

I do remember the Home Secretary saying "If you knew what I know" so there may be information that we are not privy to.

I am curious how those three young girls were able to access their passports and enough money to leave the country and not one member of their families noticed anything unusual in their behaviour.

Absolutely this!

She was groomed