Teen mum who ran off to join IS loses UK citizenship
Shamima Begum, a London teenager who left Britain four years ago to join the Islamic State group, is to be stripped of her UK citizenship by the Government, her family’s lawyer said yesterday.
Attorney Tasnime Akunjee tweeted that the family was “disappointed with the Home Office’s intention to have an order made depriving Shamima of her citizenship”.
The family was “considering all legal avenues to challenge this decision”.
ITV News reported that the family had received a letter from the Home Office, which oversaw immigration, saying that the order revoking Begum’s British citizenship had been made.
Begum left London with two friends in 2015, when she was 15, and travelled to Syria. Now 19 and living in a refugee camp, she says she has given birth and wants to go home.
The case has reignited a debate in the UK about how to deal with citizens who joined IS but want to return home now the group is on the verge of collapse. US President Donald Trump has demanded that European countries take back citizens who fought in Syria, but European nations are worried about security.
Begum is in a refugee camp in Syria, having fled the last IS enclave. She had married an IS fighter, lost two children through malnutrition and disease, and wanted her newly born boy to grow up in Britain.
She criticised some aspects of IS, but said she did not regret going there. She had been “okay with” beheadings carried out by Islamic State adherents because she believed it was allowed under Islamic law.
“I think a lot of people should have sympathy towards me for everything I’ve been through,” she told Sky News.