by Shamima Begum lost her bid to regain British citizenship after Court of Appeal judges ruled that the government was entitled to block her return to the UK to protect national security.
Last year, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) rejected his bid to regain British citizenship, and today the Court of Appeal judges upheld that decision. Delivering the ruling, Chief Justice Lady Carr said: “It could be argued that Ms. Begum’s case was hard; it could also be argued that Miss Begum is the author of her own misfortune.
“But it is not for the court to agree or disagree with either opinion.
“The court’s sole task was to consider whether the deprivation decision was unlawful. Since it was not, Ms Begum’s appeal is not dismissed.”
Begum Bethnal Green fled to Syria when she was 15 years old, and is now 24 years old. She is stuck in a refugee camp in northern Syria.
The ruling in the Begum Court of Appeal case is due for a short hearing at 10am today (Friday, February 23).
At a hearing in November last year, Shamima’s barrister Samantha Knights KC told a hearing at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission in London that she was the victim of “a determined Islamic State propaganda machine” when he lured her to to Syria in 2015 when she was. a 15 year old. That’s also the age she left the UK with two other friends, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15.
Begum said: “Sharmeena was, you know, talking to us face to face about, you know, coming to ISIS.
“I was being manipulated into thinking this was the right thing to do and I was being manipulated with lies about where I would be going and what I would be doing.
“I mean, in my opinion, even though Sharmeena is probably still a radical. I will say that she was also a victim of ISIS.”
All three joined the Islamic State group in the same year.
Begum has been in the news in recent years for her efforts to regain British citizenship and return to the country. It has since been claimed that she was smuggled into Syria by a Canadian spy.
However, less is known about the two girls who left Begum as teenagers. All three were married to members of the Islamic State, but their stories have since diverged.
Here’s a look at what has happened to Ms Abase and Ms Sultana since she left the UK.
What happened to Amira Abase?
Amira Abase married 18-year-old Islamic State fighter Abdullah Elmir. He was nicknamed “Ginger Jihadi” because of his ginger hair.
Elmir was confirmed dead following a drone strike in December 2015, shortly after Abase left the UK.
After leaving the UK, Abase kept in touch with her mother through social media, but these messages suddenly stopped.
While Begum has said she believes her friend is still alive, Abase’s mother told the press she believes her daughter is dead.
What happened to Kadiza Sultana?
The eldest of the three teenagers, Kadiza Sultana also stayed in touch with her family for a while after leaving the UK. This is documented in phone calls filmed by ITV News.
After marrying an American Islamic State fighter, Sultana claimed to be a housewife. However, intelligence sources claimed that she was involved in sewing explosives into suicide vests.
Sultana’s sister told ITV News she was “very scared”.
“She got very emotional there too. It feels… I feel helpless,” said Halima Sultana. “What can I do? It’s very difficult. I don’t think she ever made a choice on her own. That was the first and a very big one. I’m looking forward to the next call and that’s what I keep leaving.”
Sultana is believed to have died in a Russian airstrike a few weeks after those phone calls, in May 2016. However, this has never been independently confirmed.
The family’s lawyer, Tasnime Akunjee, told BBC Newsnight that the family had received reports of her death.
“We kind of expected this,” Halima told ITV News. “At least we know she’s in a better place. We don’t want her name to come up in the headlines again… She’s gone and we want to respect her wishes.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Akunjee said, “The problem with that was that the risk factors for leaving are very limited in that if ISIS was able to detect and capture you, the punishment is brutal them for trying to leave.
“In the week that she was thinking about these questions, a young Austrian girl was caught trying to leave ISIS territory and all reports were publicly beaten to death, so given that that spread in the region and beyond – it seems with me. Kadiza took that as a bad omen and decided not to take the risk. I think she found out pretty quickly that the propaganda doesn’t match the reality.”
Years later, Begum also spoke openly about her friend’s supposed death: “I was in denial at first. I thought that if we died, we would die together.”
What happened to Sharmeena Begum?
Begum was the first of the Bethnal Green girls to flee to Syria. She was recently tracked down by a BBC reporter, who discovered that she had escaped from the Camp Hol prison in Syria for women belonging to IS.
Begum is still in Syria, hiding under another identity. According to the BBC, she is raising money for IS and posting about the conditions of the detention camps on social media.
She claimed that the money she was collecting was “just feeding and clothing poor women and children”.
However, the BBC reports that IS is regrouping and using money smuggled into the camps to buy weapons and plan attacks.
