Isis child bride loses appeal to restore UK citizenship
FORMER Isis child bride Shamima Begum has vowed to keep on fighting after losing her Court of Appeal challenge over the removal of her British citizenship.
Begum was aged 15 when she travelled to Syria in 2015 to join the murderous terror organisation.
Now 24, she claims she was groomed online and wants to return home but her citizenship was revoked on national security grounds shortly after she was found in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019.
Last year she lost a challenge against the decision at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission.
Her lawyers brought a bid to overturn that decision at the Court of Appeal, with the Home Office opposing the challenge.
But in a ruling yesterday, three judges dismissed the bid. However, the legal battle will continue as her lawyers vowed to “keep fighting” until she is “safely back home”.
They could now ask for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Yesterday’s decision was welcomed by the Government and Tory MPs including Robert Jenrick, who insisted “national security must come first”.
Vulnerable
But Maya Foa, director of NGO Reprieve, said: “Rather than demonise Shamima Begum, ministers should reckon with the institutional failures that enabled Isis to traffic vulnerable British women and girls.”
Giving the latest ruling, Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr said: “It could be argued the decision in Ms Begum’s case was harsh. It could also be argued that Ms Begum is the author of her own misfortune.
“But it is not for this court to agree or disagree with either point of view.
“Our only task is to rule on whether the decision was unlawful.”
At the appeal hearing in October, Samantha Knights KC told the court the Government had failed to consider the legal duties owed to Ms Begum as a potential victim of trafficking or as a result of “state failures” in her case.
But Sir James Eadie KC, for the Home Office, said the “key feature” of the case was national security.
In its ruling last year, the SIAC concluded there were “arguable breaches of duty” by state bodies – including the Metropolitan Police, Tower Hamlets Council and Begum’s school – in not preventing her from travelling to Syria.