British woman who joined Islamic State asks to return home
LONDON — Lawyers representing Shamima Begum, a London schoolgirl who traveled to Syria in 2015 to join the Islamic State group, on Tuesday called on Britain’s Supreme Court to allow her to return to her home country to mount her defense, saying the court should not assume she posed a serious threat.
A decision in the case, which has been debated in Britain after the government said Begum would be stripped of her British nationality, could leave her stateless or pave the way for a landmark trial in Britain.
Begum is seeking to return to Britain to challenge a decision last year by the government of Theresa May, the prime minister at the time, to revoke her citizenship on the grounds that she posed a threat to national security.
David Pannick, one of Begum’s lawyers, argued on the final day of a two-day hearing at Britain’s highest court that it had been difficult for Begum to communicate with her lawyers from the camp in Syria where she is being detained, and that she could only properly mount her defense in Britain.
“It cannot be assumed that because Ms. Begum traveled to Syria to join ISIL, she is a continuing threat,” Pannick added, using an acronym for the Islamic State.
The Supreme Court’s decision is expected at a later date.
Begum’s case underlines the challenges faced by several European governments, including Britain, France and Germany, that have been reluctant to repatriate citizens who traveled to Islamic State territories, many of whom are now detained in dire conditions by Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria.
Begum, now 21, boarded a flight from London to Turkey with two friends in 2015 and then entered Syria to join Islamic State, or IS, later marrying a Dutch fighter there and giving birth to three children, all of whom have since died. One of those friends, Kadiza Sultana, is believed to have been killed in an airstrike in Syria in 2016; the fate of the other, Amira Abase, is unknown.
French migrant probe:
France’s interior minister ordered an internal police investigation Tuesday after officers were filmed tossing migrants out of tents while evacuating a protest camp in Paris.
Aid groups and the government were working to find temporary lodging for hundreds of migrants forcibly removed from the shortlived camp on the Place de la Republique in eastern Paris on Monday night.
The evacuation drew nationwide attention amid tensions over a draft law beefing up police powers that easily passed a vote in France’s lower house of parliament Tuesday.
Aid groups and Paris legislators said they set up the protest camp to call attention to the plight of hundreds of migrants who were kicked out of another camp in the shadow of France’s national stadium last week and have been sleeping in the streets since then for lack of other options.
Most are from Afghanistan, Somalia and Eritrea, and some have been refused asylum while others are in bureaucratic limbo while they try to apply, said Corinne Torre, head of the aid group Doctors Without Borders in France.
Obama’s book: Former President Barack Obama’s “A Promised Land” sold more than 1.7 million copies in North America in its first week, roughly equal to the combined first week sales of memoirs by his two immediate predecessors and among the highest ever for a nonfiction book.
Crown announced Tuesday that it had increased its initial print run from 3.4 million copies to 4.3 million. Sales also include audio and digital books.
“A Promised Land,” the first of two planned volumes, was published Nov. 17 and sold nearly 890,000 copies just in its first day. Among former White House residents, only Obama’s wife, Michelle, approaches his popularity as a writer. Her “Becoming,” published in 2018, has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.
Pope’s book: A comment from Pope Francis in an upcoming book — in which he called ethnic Uighurs in western China a “persecuted” people for the first time — has set the Chinese government on the defense.
The reference to abuses against Uighurs, which Beijing has long denied despite evidence of a brutal crackdown, could tarnish the recent warming of relations between the Vatican and China.
Writing in his new book “Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future,” Francis listed “the poor Uighurs” among the people of the world he kept in his mind and prayers.
“I think often of persecuted peoples,” Francis said in one passage. “The Rohingya, the poor Uighurs, the Yazidi — what ISIS did to them was truly cruel — or Christians in Egypt and Pakistan killed by bombs that went off while they prayed in church.”
Zhao Lijian, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said Tuesday that the pope’s words had “no factual basis.”
At Harvard: A 20-year-old man from Mississippi has become the first Black, elected student body president at Harvard University.
Noah Harris, of Hattiesburg, was elected president of Harvard’s Undergraduate Council on Nov. 12, the Hattiesburg American reports. He is a junior who is majoring in government and co-chairs the Undergraduate Council’s Black caucus.
Two other Black students have previously headed Harvard’s Undergraduate Council, but Harris is the first Black man to be elected by the student body.
Harris told the newspaper that he does not take the honor lightly.
“Especially with everything that went on this summer with the death of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, all the protests that went on in this moment of racial reckoning in this country,” he said. “This is a major statement by the Harvard student body to entrust a Black man with such an unprecedented moment in its history.”
A Lebanese prosecutor filed charges Tuesday against current and former customs officials over the massive blast at Beirut’s port in August, including a former customs chief who was reportedly the point man for the militant Hezbollah group at the facility.
State prosecutor Ghassan Khoury charged senior customs official Hani Haj Shehadeh and former customs chief in Beirut, Moussa Hazimeh, on Tuesday, according to state-run National News Agency.
Hazimeh was reportedly the point man for Hezbollah at the Port of Beirut when nearly 2,750 tons of fertilizer were stored there more than six years ago. The ammonium nitrate blew up Aug. 4, killing over 200 people, injuring thousands and causing billions of dollars in damage.
Lebanon port blast: