Shamima’s crimes were sickening — but she’s British all the same
When we first heard the story of Shamima Begum, how many of us, in truth, felt remotely sorry for her? This was a 15-year- old London schoolgirl who had tricked her Bangladeshi parents into thinking she was going on holiday and left for war-torn Syria with two friends to marry terrorists. Many — myself included — believed that she should rot in hell for this criminal stupidity.
This deluded girl witnessed — and, who knows, may have participated in — the most appalling atrocities. When, years later, she was found in a refugee camp, Begum coldly revealed she had felt ‘ unfazed’ when she saw a severed head in a bin.
no wonder we applauded ex-home Secretary Sajid Javid when he stripped her of her British citizenship, denying her the right to return.
now this bride of Isis is said to be ‘angry, upset and crying’ after five Supreme Court justices unanimously ruled yesterday that she cannot return to the UK to fight for her citizenship to be restored, amid concerns over ‘national security’.
Begum has now lost three babies to starvation and pneumonia. She is living under armed guard, in conditions far more squalid than she would face in any British prison. her husband — an equally idiotic Dutchborn jihadi — is in jail. her family cannot see her. Lord alive, what kind of risk does this 21-year-old — who would surely be watched closely by the authorities and the country at large were she ever to come home — pose? Whatever this is, it isn’t justice. Of the near-900 Brits — mostly men, of course — who travelled to join Isis (many committing the most sickening atrocities), 40 per cent have been allowed to return. Many are now in prison. But not Shamima, stuck in her physical and legal no-man’s-land. As a teenager, Begum was brainwashed by a hideous ideology. Should she pay for that for the rest of her life, when rapists and murderers avoid deportation claiming it would breach their ‘human rights’? Signing up to a barbaric death cult was more than a mistake: it was a crime. Begum crossed all barriers of decency. She slept with the enemy in the most grotesque way. And yet forgiveness must remain the core of our Christian culture — especially for children. She is British whether or not she has a passport. Paedophiles get lesser sentences than she has served in the hell of those camps. The judges are wrong. Shamima must come home to face stiff British justice. how else can we be a nation that believes in redemption?