Jihadi bride’s bid to get back into Britain
Ministers yesterday vowed not to risk UK lives in a bid to rescue pregnant teenager Shamima Begum, who is begging to come home despite having ‘no regrets’ about her four years in Syria.
But if the 19-year-old makes it across borders to a British consulate, officials will have little choice but to allow her home so the NHS can care for her baby.
And the Mail understands dozens more jihadi brides are poised to return to Britain as their caliphate is destroyed.
Begum was just 15 when she and two other pupils from Bethnal Green Academy in London flew to Syria in 2015 to marry Isis fighters. This week she shocked the world again by showing up at a refugee camp in northern Syria, having fled the terror group’s final battle. Nine months pregnant, she declared no remorse over joining Isis but revealed her first two children had died. She now wants NHS help for her third baby.
Last night, her mother in East London broke down in tears after speaking to her long-lost daughter by phone – telling her to ‘just come home’. Begum’s brother-in-law said he understood ‘why people don’t want her back’, but appealed for compassion. However, there is furious opposition in Britain to the idea of welcoming her back.
British taxpayers could face enormous costs in repatriating Begum and other women in a similar situation, who will need to be kept under surveillance as well as being given protection against potential vigilante attacks.
UK security minister Ben Wallace said ‘actions have consequences’, but admitted that as a British citizen, ‘she [Begum] has rights – that’s the reality of it’. In a newspaper interview, Begum told Anthony Loyd, a correspondent for The Times who found her in the Al-Hawl refugee camp, that ‘I don’t regret coming’ to Syria. She added: ‘When I saw my first severed head in a bin, it didn’t faze me at all. It was from a captured fighter on the battlefield – an enemy of Islam.’ Begum said that as of two weeks ago, her old classmates Amira Abase and Sharmeena Begum were alive – but both had chosen to stay in the town of Baghuz, where Isis is being crushed by Kurdish-backed Syrian forces.
A fourth girl, Kadiza Sultana, was reportedly killed in 2016. Shamima Begum’s brother-in-law Mohammed Rehman said: ‘We are happy that she’s alive but sad that things have come to this. She’s lost two children and put us all through a lot of heartache. Shamima’s mother broke down when she heard her voice.
‘I can understand why people in this country are angry and don’t want her back. But we are appealing for compassion.’ Mohammad Uddin, the father of Sharmeena Begum, said the girls should be forgiven because they were ‘radicalised and brainwashed’. Abase’s father, Hussen Abase, said: ‘They are no threat to us.’
Tasnime Akunjee, a lawyer for the families, said they should be ‘seen as victims’, adding: ‘I’m grateful she’s still alive, but she remains in danger.’
Peter Fahu, former chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, said Begum could become ‘some sort of lightning rod for both Islamic and far-right extremists’.
Sources said there were dozens of British women and their children in the camps spread across Syria. Prime minister Theresa May’s spokesman said those who went to Syria ‘will be questioned, investigated and potentially prosecuted’ on their return. BRITAIN could be forced to take back a runaway Islamic State schoolgirl and dozens of other jihadi brides fleeing their collapsing caliphate.
‘Severed head in bin didn’t faze me’