Javid: Blame the jihadists for death of Shamima’s son
SAJID Javid last night insisted that he was not to blame for the death of Shamima Begum’s baby son after the teenager’s mother pleaded with him to reinstate her British citizenship as ‘an act of mercy’.
The Home Secretary, who had stripped the Islamic State bride of her citizenship, said any blame for the infant’s death lay fully with jihadists.
Over the weekend, shadow home secretary Diane Abbott had suggested that Mr Javid was responsible for the death of three-week-old Jerah in a Syrian refugee camp last week.
But responding to an Urgent Question yesterday, Mr Javid told MPs: ‘The death of any British child is a tragedy but the only person responsible is the foreign terrorist fighter.’
He said he would not ‘shy away’ from stripping other UK passport holders of their citizenship, adding: ‘The purpose of the power is to protect our country.’ The Home Secretary also revealed that the remaining 300 UK passport holders who went to Syria and remain unaccounted for are ‘active and very dangerous’ – despite the near fall of the caliphate.
And Mr Javid said he was looking at ‘modernising’ treason laws which would allow jihadists returning from Syria to be prosecuted.
In a letter to the Home Office yesterday on behalf of Begum’s mother Asma, her lawyer Tasnime Akunjee called on the Home Secretary to reverse his decision to strip Shamima of a UK passport. Mr Akunjee wrote: ‘Ms Begum requests this reconsideration, as an act of mercy, on the basis of the following new information, namely the death of her newborn son.’
The 19-year-old, who fled the UK for Syria four years ago, had given interviews from Syria saying she wished to return to the UK for the baby’s safety after her two older children died. But Jerah died from pneumonia on Friday.