Begum knew what she was doing, says MI5
IS bride who went to Syria aged 15 was trafficked and should not lose her British citizenship, lawyers claim
‘It is not conceivable that even a 15-year-old ... an intelligent, articulate individual ... would not know what Islamic State was about’
SHAMIMA BEGUM “knew what she was doing” when she went to join Islamic State (IS) in Syria, a senior MI5 officer has told her citizenship appeal.
Ms Begum, now 23, was said by her lawyers to have been “cynically recruited and groomed” when aged 15, before she was trafficked for sexual exploitation at the hands of the terror group in 2015.
She is now mounting a fresh attempt to have her British citizenship restored after Sajid Javid, then home secretary, revoked it after she was found in a Syrian refugee camp in 2019.
The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) is being asked to declare the decision unlawful on grounds including that Ms Begum was a trafficking victim and that she did not pose a national security threat.
However, an MI5 officer who led a team investigating terrorist activity in Syria and Iraq in 2019 told the hearing it was “inconceivable” that Ms Begum “would not know what [IS] was doing as a terrorist organisation at this time”.
Asked by Ms Begum’s lawyer, Dan Squires KC, whether the security service considered whether she was a victim of trafficking, he replied: “We consider whether someone is a threat – it is important to note that victims can very much be threats even if someone is a victim of trafficking.”
The officer, who spoke from behind a curtain and was referred to as Witness E, told the appeal it was “worth remembering” the crimes IS had already committed when Ms Begum left for Syria. He listed atrocities including “the second deadliest terror attack in history” when 1,700 military cadets were slaughtered in Iraq in June 2014, the genocide of Yazidis in Sinjar, Iraq, and the beheading of journalists including James Foley, Alan Henning and David Haines. He said: “In my mind and that of colleagues, it is not conceivable that even a 15-year-old – that 15-year-old having been predicted As and A*s [in exams], an intelligent, articulate and presumably critically thinking individual – would not know what (IS) was about. “In some respects, I do believe she knew what she was doing and had agency in doing so.”
At the start of the hearing, Samantha Knights KC, for Ms Begum, said the case concerned a British girl who, with her friends, had been “influenced and affected … by a determined and effective [IS] propaganda machine”.
She was then “provided in marriage to an Isis fighter” and now continues to be held in “indefinite detention by a non-state actor seeking to prevent all access to her by lawyers”.
Ms Begum remains at the al-roj camp in northern Syria, which is run by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). She has given birth to and lost three children since travelling to the warzone.
Ms Knights continued: “It goes without saying that the deprivation of citizenship is an extreme measure. In Ms Begum’s case, it is effectively an exile for life.”
Ms Knights told the hearing that Ms Begum was smuggled over the border into Syria by a Canadian IS “agent”. It has previously been reported that a spy embedded in IS but working for the Canadian intelligence service was involved in taking Ms Begum to Syria.
In separate written arguments, Mr Squires has said Ms Begum “was following a well-known pattern by which IS cynically recruited and groomed female children, as young as 14, ... [to] be offered as ‘wives’ to adult men”.
Sir James Eadie KC, for the Home Office, said in his own written submissions that the UK security services “continue to assess that Ms Begum poses a risk to national security”.
“This is a case about national security,” he said, adding: “This is not a case about trafficking.”
The case will continue being heard for the rest of the week.
◆ Madrid is to bring back several Spanish wives, widows and children of IS fighters from detention camps in Syria.
Spanish government sources yesterday confirmed reports that plans were being made to bring the women and the 16 children to Spain. It will be the first time it has repatriated citizens connected to IS and comes after other EU countries including Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Italy brought back some citizens from the camps. France repatriated 51 women and children from Syria in July, and the US state department had recently urged Spain to do likewise.