Begum’s future

sir – Shamima Begum, whose case is discussed by Judith Woods (Features, January 13), has gone to great lengths to persuade everyone that she was an innocent victim, not a terrorist sympathiser.

However, she herself said she was unfazed by having severed heads in her dustbin. She is not innocent.

Deradicalisation has been shown to be ineffective, and she has made her choice. Letting her return to Britain would be a huge mistake and an insult to the families of all those who were killed or maimed by Isis terrorists. Mick Ferrie

Mawnan Smith, Cornwall

sir – Judith Woods is right. We need to talk sensibly about Shamima Begum.

I have teenage granddaughters, and when I consider the potential hazards they may face I am appalled at the continuing attitude towards Miss Begum.

As a young teenage boy more than 65 years ago, I stole money and a gun from home in Scotland; full of romantic ideas of adventure, I ran away to London. (I did not have a passport or I might have made it abroad.) Fortunately, despite being missing for several days, no harm came to me and, eventually, I was located by the police and reunited with my desperate family. The outcome could have been so different.

Miss Begum was less fortunate. As a 15-year-old girl, she was seduced by a perverted ideology into running away from home and becoming, within days, willingly or not, the underage consort of an Isis activist, and eventually the mother of three dead babies.

By any civilised standard she was an abused child, and deserves the care and understanding that would be afforded to any such girl, even though she is now an adult.

William Fleming

Frimley, Surrey