Shamima Begum‘s hopes of returning to the UK from her detention camp in northeast Syria have been dashed again, said Haroon Siddique in The Guardian.
Last week, three Court of Appeal judges ruled unanimously that Sajid Javid, as home secretary in 2019, had acted lawfully when he revoked her citizenship on grounds of national security.
The court left it to others to judge whether it had been a harsh way of treating someone who may have been “influenced and manipulated” to run off to Syria as a 15-year-old schoolgirl to join Islamic State, merely ruling that the decision had been procedurally fair. It was sufficient that Javid had considered such factors, even if he had ultimately rejected them. Begum’s lawyers have promised to fight on, but it’s hard to see the Supreme Court overturning this definitive ruling.
‘Not entirely culpable’
A good thing too, said Niall Gooch on UnHerd. We can recognise that Begum, now 24, is in a wretched situation, and that she is “not entirely culpable, without concluding that the only right response is for her to return to Britain”. There are other factors to consider, such as “the British state’s ability to defend itself and assert its authority in the face of monstrous enemies”.
Besides, it could be argued that the Government, by depriving Begum of citizenship, is simply recognising the reality that she has “no allegiance to or affection for Britain, beyond a transactional desire to benefit from the services and quality of life available here”.
The Government’s banishment of Begum may be “legally sound”, said Kate McCann in The i Paper, but it’s morally dubious. At least 30 British women and children remain stuck in squalid detention camps in Syria. Other Western nations such as France, Germany and America have repatriated many families who lived under the IS caliphate, but the UK has brought back just two adult nationals in recent years.
This despite warnings that the camps risk becoming breeding grounds for a new generation of Islamist terrorists. Officials have described them as a “ticking time bomb”. The UK should be doing its part, alongside allies, to help defuse this situation. Instead, by turning our back on the likes of Begum, we’re ignoring the problem and leaving it to others to sort out.