As Shamima queues at bank, is someone illegally sending her cash?
NOTORIOUS jihadi bride Shamima Begum has been seen joining a queue outside a refugee camp ‘bank’ that pays out money sent by family and supporters.
The 22-year-old last week joined a group of women who were crowded around a ‘hawala’ money exchange in the Al-Roj camp in Northern Syria. When she spotted our reporter, Begum turned on her heels and walked away, refusing to answer questions.
While Begum, who was wearing Western clothing including a purple jacket, black leggings, a black Nike baseball cap and sunglasses, was not seen collecting money, her appearance raises the possibility that she may have been sent funds from relatives or supporters.
Under the UK Terrorism Act, it is an offence to provide funds to those who have joined or aligned themselves with a proscribed organisation, including Isis. Those found guilty can face up to 14 years in prison.
The Mail on Sunday had earlier established that the unremarkable window in a blank concrete wall was a money exchange for women held in the camp. A woman outside pointed to the window and said: ‘They give me 300 [dollars].’ Asked who had provided the money, she replied: ‘My family... in France.’
Separately, two other British jihadi brides in the camp claimed they had received money from relatives in Britain.
Hawala is a discreet money transfer system that relies on trust between brokers. The practice allows an individual in a Western nation to hand over a sum of cash to a local agent. The agent contacts a colleague in the camp who pays the money to a woman living there. Western security services suspect hawala – with no paper trail – is used to fund terrorist groups.
Isis fanatics also send money to women in the camps so they can pay people smugglers to free them. To combat smuggling, the authorities have ordered the bankers to limit withdrawals to $300.
The bank was last week operating openly, with Kurdish guards unperturbed by the crowd of women receiving payments. Indeed, its activities are so blatant that the bank is said to provide a free two-minute phone call service so women can ring friends and family to ask for money.
Begum, who was born to Bangladeshi parents and raised in Bethnal Green, East London, was a 15-yearold schoolgirl when she fled to Syria with her friends Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana to join Isis in February 2015. She married a Dutch convert called Yago Riedijk and has since had three children, who all died.
She was found by journalists in a
Syrian camp in February 2019. Dressed in a hijab, she initially voiced support for Isis but has since claimed to have disowned the terror group.
That same month the British Government stripped Begum, who has dual nationality, of her citizenship on national security grounds.
Last July the Court of Appeal ruled she should be allowed to return to the UK to contest the decision but the Supreme Court reversed that decision in February.