Shamima Begum

[Mamabear04]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2n8xv61x3o

I'll admit I actually don't know much about this apart from it being on the news when it happened and I did watch a documentary about it. Do you think she should be allowed to have British citizenship? I mean she was a child when it happened, surely she was groomed? And now stateless, doomed to live indefinitely in a camp with nowhere to go? I think running away to join Isis is of course absolutely awful but surely she should be treated as a child that was groomed? Or am I missing something?

yes, and as I said these were just words and there’s a huge context to them. They should not be used to sentence her for life in the court of public opinion. This journalist behaved irresponsibly (not to mention he was also asking leading questions).

There’s a reason we have proper court procedures for these things. Rules of how evidence (including an accused own words) can be used. Rules of how interviews can take place and the context for them- how they can be used in court - what can be put to the jury etc etc.

So let her come back to the State who is rightly responsible for her and stand trial according to the appropriate rules and procedures of justice that we all accept and live under.

So let her come back to the State who is rightly responsible for her and stand trial according to the appropriate rules and procedures of justice that we all accept and live under.

It's over. She is done. Finished. And will never set foot on UK soil again.

Good.

I do agree it seems harsh given what info we have but I wonder if perhaps there is more to it which isn’t able to be reported by or isn’t even known to the media because of national security.

Yes there are courts and millions has been spent on her fighting in court to return and she lost. Back and forward to court making her lawyers even more wealthy.

Enough money has been spent in court on this terrorist sympathiser.

It's sickening that even a penny of public money has been spent on her.

There is more to it than expressed on this thread. There have been numerous court cases and she lost based on legal arguments.

The only question for the court was was it technically legal for the gov to remove her citizenship . The court process wasn’t about questions of whether she was “a terrorist” or a victim , whether she had actually committed any crimes she was responsible for etc.

And now stateless....

She's not. She had dual British and Syrian citizenship. As a result of the UK Govt's action she is now simply a Syrian citizen. That's one of the main reasons her appeals fail, as I understand it.

The result was she cannot return. The court found she has no right to return here.

There you go. I agree with the court.

No, she does not have, nor has she ever had, Syrian citizenship. At the time she was stripped of her British citizenship she also had Bangladeshi citizenship. However, that lapsed on her 21st birthday. She is now stateless. As the Court of Appeal said, it would have been unlawful to remove her British citizenship after her 21st birthday. However, as the decision was taken when she was 19 it was lawful.

the opposite has actually been expressed extremely strongly by many of the communities living near-around al Hol, and those who were most affected by ISIS crimes, who believe largely that rich western nations should be responsible for people radicalized on their soil and not leave the considerable financial and mental toll of maintaining areas of prisons for largely European foreigners at their door, in an area that is still under risk from the last pockets of insurgency

And …. she’s taking it to the EHCR as would be expected.

Good, I hope her human rights are finally upheld.

She made herself stateless.

When we removed her U.K. citizenship she was or had another one. She decided not to even bother trying to apply knowing it expired at 21.

She played a game of fuck around and find out. Now she’s stopping her feet mad that she found out.

This

Do you really think this is how it is? That Bangladesh would have given her a passport and admitted her into their communities? A country to which she has no links other than the place of her parents’ birth, in which she has never even stepped foot?
Why on earth would they do so, when the UK - the responsible country in which she was born, raised, educated and radicalised had renounced her as a terrorist?
The Bangladeshi foreign minister said if she tried to migrate to Bangladesh she would face execution.

Again that very much sounds like a her problem.

The U.K. just got in first before they could.

Fuck around and find out. Be a criminal and the countries can decide to use which ever laws they legally can to punish you.

She had two citizenships so we were legally fine to remove ours. That’s her problem for being a terrorist.

Well it’s interesting because she effectively repudiated her UK nationality by a) leaving the country to join another and b) not taking up her alternative nationality when she could have done (before age 21). The human right to nationality was largely written to prevent people being dispossessed and discriminated against by their own governments - for example Jewish Germans in the 1930s.

It wasn’t framed to spare people from the consequences of their own decisions - made after childhood, as 18 is adult, and she had three years to take up Bangladeshi citizenship and didn’t. If she had done so and they had refused, I think she would have a stronger case, but as I understand it she didn’t try. Happy to be corrected if this is not the case.

the opposite has actually been expressed extremely strongly by many of the communities living near-around al Hol

If that is the general opinion then no problem, go to Bangladesh. Everyone's happy.

Fuck around and find out. Be a criminal Be a naive 15 year old girl who fell victim to grooming for the purposes of sex trafficking and the countries can decide… to punish you.

There I fixed it for you.

I dont buy into the notion that a 15 year old can’t tell right from wrong, especially regarding the joining of a barbaric caliphate that commits acts of terror upon her own country.

Some of the things that she has said in interviews was abhorrent. She also stated that she knew exactly what she was doing when she decided to travel to Syria.

The Home Secretary’s decision to remove her British citizenship fell within the scope of the Immigration, Asylum & Nationality Act and therefore was not illegal. This has been confirmed by the Supreme Court after many appeals. SB was a Bangladeshi citizen until the age of 21, under Bangladesh’s own constitution. SB decided herself to let that lapse. Even with the Bangladeshi government stating they would not allow her in, she made no attempt to challenge this through their courts. SB made herself stateless.

SB was rightfully and legally stripped of her British citizenship.

Again that very much sounds like a her problem
So if your, or family member, 15yo daughter was groomed at home without your knowledge, encouraged to go and bring back drugs to the UK, was caught and sent to jail in that country, would you just claim' sounds like her problem' and do nothing to try to bring them back?

So let her come back to the State who is rightly responsible for her and stand trial according to the appropriate rules and procedures of justice that we all accept and live under.

@Tandora why should she be tried here when she committed crimes abroad? Do you think Jihadi John should be tried in UK?

She was a child who was groomed. Absolutely ridiculous that this very basic fact is ignored.

but are you being deliberately obtuse now? because she can’t.
And it’s all very well people doing the whole ‘she fucked around and found out’ thing but the fact remains that she only ever had tenous links to bangladesh whilst her entire upbringing - and radicalisation - took place in the uk. With, arguably, a significant degree of failings from institutions from social services to uk anti radicalisation programmes who had her in sight as a fifteen year old child who should have known better but didn’t but still remained a fifteen year old child.

Are we really being so flippant as to act like the government’s ethical/moral reaponsibility ends with ‘oh well, bangladesh can have her’ knowing full well that they won’t and knowing that regardless of the technicalities and facts of the situation, this leaves the responsibility for her care and upkeep on a population she was partly responsible for demonizing?

The colonial attitude really remains strong I guess.