IS bride justifies Manchester bomb as ‘retaliation’ for Syria air strikes

A TEENAGE girl who fled Britain to join Islamic State (IS) has compared the Manchester Arena bombing to military assaults on Syria.

Shamima Begum (19) said the deaths of 22 innocent people in the terrorist attack during an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017 were akin to the “women and children” being bombed in IS territory in Baghuz.

She said: “I do feel that it’s wrong that innocent people did get killed. It’s one thing to kill a soldier that is fighting you, it’s self-defence, but to kill the people like women and children.

“Just people like the women and children in Baghuz that are being killed right now unjustly, the bombings. It’s a two-way thing, really.

“Because women and children are being killed back in the Islamic State right now and it’s kind of retaliation. Like, their justification was that it was retaliation so I thought: ‘OK, that is a fair justification’.”

The mother-of-three, who gave birth to her third child at the weekend, left east London with two friends in 2015 to join the terrorist group.

She was partly inspired by videos of fighters beheading hostages and partly by other propaganda films showing the “good life” IS could offer.

Since she has been there, her two older children have died.

The teenager insisted she did not ask to be the subject of international media attention.

Shamima Begum. and (right) the scene inside the Manchester Arena after a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device in May 2017, killing 22 people

She said: “I didn’t want to be on the news at first. I know a lot of people, after they saw that me and my friends came, it actually encouraged them.

“I did hear a lot of people were encouraged to come after I left but I wasn’t the one that put myself on the news. We didn’t want to be on the news.”

UK authorities now face the difficult question of what to do if Ms Begum manages to return to Britain.

Her family’s lawyer Tasnime Akunjee said he anticipated that she would face criminal proceedings

upon any return to the UK, but said it was the family’s hope that she would be given professional help following her experience in Syria.

He said: “The family have gone out of their way from day one to try to get her away from the IS narrative and the context which she finds herself in.

“She’s been there for four years and we would be surprised if she hadn’t been further damaged beyond the degree she had already been groomed into.

“The family are concerned, as they have been for the last four

years, not just to get her away, but, as of yesterday, to make sure that their grandchild — her child — is not influenced by that sort of thinking.”

Yesterday the Home Secretary said no British troops would be used to rescue any Britons who travelled to Syria to support terrorism.

Sajid Javid told MPs more than 100 dual nationals had already lost their UK citizenship as he replied to an urgent question in the Commons.

He said: “Certainly anyone that went to support terrorism in

any way whatsoever, we are not going to risk the lives of any British officials — soldiers or anyone — to help them or rescue them.”

Mr Javid said more than 900 people went to Syria or Iraq, adding: “Whatever role they took in the so-called caliphate, they all supported a terrorist organisation and in doing so they have shown they hate our country and the values we stand for.”

Tory MP Matthew Offord said: “There is huge concern in this country about the return of Shamima Begum”, saying she had shown no remorse.