Jihadi bride must come home – to face British justice

FREE, humane, law-governed countries, such as Britain, find it surprisingly hard to fight against terror.

You would think it would be easy for a huge majority of good people to take on a tiny evil minority and win. But terrorist methods and ideas take cruel advantage of the liberty and civilisation we provide. They use t hem against us, exploiting our decency and making it look like weakness.

If we abandon our own rest r ai nts, we al l t oo quickly destroy the very things that make our societies good in the first place. This is why it is seldom simple to deal with the menace in our midst. The grand words of politicians, promising to hunt terrorists down and bring them to justice, often prove empty in practice.

So we should be careful not to threaten more than we can deliver when faced with the sulky and unrepentant folly of the teenage jihadi Shamima Begum. But in the same spirit, we must be very firm with her where it is possible. Not only must such a person be treated with grave suspicion.

We have to deter others from doing as she has done. The temptation to tell her that she has made her own problems and can live with them is strong. But in law she is entitled to return to Britain, and common humanity obliges us to ensure the safety of her unborn baby, who is entirely innocent.

Even so, she cannot expect just to float back into her former life as if nothing had happened. She must certainly face the most thorough investigation. If that investigation justifies prosecution, then she must face trial.

The USA is scornful of our antiterror efforts, and with some justification. It is quite likely that British-born fighters of Islamic State – including the two survivors of the so-called ‘Beatles’ cell – will end up not in British custody but in the legal limbo of Guantanamo Bay, because Washington has lost patience with us.

This is not surprising. Just 40 out of 400 British citizens returning from Syria have been prosecuted. Most are in ‘rehabilitation’ programmes. This sends a dangerous signal to those in this country who might be tempted to head off to any new terror centre which may arise out of the ruins of Islamic State. We need to re-examine our laws, and their enforcement, and our domestic and foreign intelligence services need to re-examine their methods. The case of Shamima Begum is a warning that we are still not adequately defending ourselves against a real menace. We should heed it now, not wait for worse to come.