Jihadi bride can’t come back
Shamima Begum weeps in Syrian camp as Supreme Court rules she WON’T be allowed back to UK to challenge decision to strip her of citizenship
‘In violation of common morality’
ISLAMIC State bride Shamima Begum wept yesterday as Britain’s highest court threw out her bid to return to the UK.
The terrorist sympathiser – said by the Home Office to pose a ‘very real’ risk to Britain – learned from television news reports how the Supreme Court had rejected her last-ditch legal challenge.
The ruling re-affirmed that the power to decide matters of national security belonged to the Home Secretary and not the courts.
In a boost for Priti Patel, the unanimous judgment by five Supreme Court justices knocked down all of Begum’s appeals. She was 15 when she and two other schoolgirls from Bethnal Green, east
London, sneaked out of Britain to join Islamic State in 2015.
Yesterday, tearful Begum, now 21, was consoled by other women as she sat on a pile of mattresses in a crowded tent at al-Roj refugee camp in northern Syria.
Asked to comment on the Supreme Court’s ruling, Begum, who no longer wears the Islamic veil and was dressed in blue jeans, trainers and a sun hat, said only: ‘No.’
The Supreme Court justices overturned an earlier ruling by the Court of Appeal that backed her bid to return to this country to contest a decision made in 2019 to revoke her British citizenship.
The senior judges said the lower court failed to attach enough weight to the Home Secretary’s assessment of the risk posed by Begum, who initially expressed no remorse.
The ruling by the highest court in the land that protecting the public from terrorism was more important than extremists’ rights left human rights campaigners indignant.
Miss Patel said: ‘The Supreme Court has reaffirmed the Home Secretary’s authority to make vital national security decisions. The Government will always take the strongest possible action to protect our national security, and our priority remains maintaining the safety and security of our citizens.’ Her predecessor, Sajid Javid, withdrew Begum’s citizenship, triggering a two-year legal saga that ended yesterday.
He said: ‘I strongly welcome the Supreme Court’s ruling. The Home Secretary is responsible for the security of our citizens and borders, and therefore should have the power to decide whether anyone posing a serious threat to that security can enter our country.
‘There are no simple solutions to this situation, but any restrictions of rights and freedoms faced by this individual are a direct consequence of the extreme actions that she and others have taken, in violation of Government guidance and common morality.’
A spokesman for Boris Johnson said: ‘We are obviously pleased with the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision. The Government’s priority is maintaining our national security.
‘Decisions to deprive individuals of their citizenship are not taken lightly. We’ll always ensure the safety and security of the UK, and will not allow anything to jeopardise this.’
Lord Reed, president of the Supreme Court, said the Court of Appeal ruling did not give the Secretary of State’s national security assessment ‘the respect it should have received’.
He noted that the Home Secretary ‘has been charged by Parliament with responsibility for making such assessments, and is democratically accountable to Parliament for the discharge of that responsibility’.
The lower court ‘made its own assessment of the requirements of national security, and preferred it to that of the Secretary of State, despite the absence of any relevant evidence before it’.
He added: ‘The Court of Appeal mistakenly believed that, when an individual’s right to have a fair hearing of an appeal came into conflict with the requirements of national security, her right to a fair hearing must prevail. But the right to a fair hearing does not trump all other considerations, such as the safety of the public.’
Yesterday’s ruling means Begum will have to remain outside the UK until she can properly take part in her own appeal against the loss of her citizenship without compromising public safety.
Lord Reed said: ‘That is not a perfect solution, as it is not known how long it may be before that is possible. But there is no perfect solution to a dilemma of the present kind.
He added that arguments by Begum’s lawyers appeared ‘to be fallacious’. When the Supreme Court heard the case in November, James Eadie QC, for the Home Secretary, said the threat Begum posed was ‘very real and very serious’. She had remained in Syria until the fall of IS, and ‘someone radicalised when young is just as much of a threat as a person radicalised later’.
Begum claims she wed Dutch IS fighter Yago Riedijk days after arriving in IS territory. She and Riedijk, who is in jail in Syria, had three children who died in infancy. The two girls who fled at the
same time, Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase, are thought to be dead.
Rosie Brighouse, of the human rights group Liberty, said: ‘The security services have safely managed the returns of hundreds of people from Syria, but the Government has chosen to target Shamima Begum.’ But Dr Alan Mendoza, of the Henry Jackson Society think-tank, said: ‘Shamima Begum left to join a terrorist group that had declared war against the UK. She has shown no remorse. Groups like Liberty who intervened in this case have wasted taxpayers’ money and acted against the national security interest.’