Shamima Begum: no right to return
What a welcome turn-up for the books, said Patrick O’Flynn in The Daily Telegraph. We’ve grown so accustomed over recent years to judges putting the rights of criminals before those of the law-abiding majority, that it came as a genuine surprise last week when the Supreme Court did the opposite. Reversing a decision by the Court of Appeal, the justices unanimously ruled that the “jihadi bride” Shamima Begum was not entitled to return to this country to contest the home secretary’s decision to strip her of her British citizenship. The 21-year-old’s right to a fair hearing, they said, did not trump national security considerations. Quite right. The ruling is “a victory for common sense”.
Some see Begum as a victim, said Ramsha Khan in the Daily Express, but it’s not our fault that she has spent the past three years in a Syrian refugee camp. She voluntarily renounced her British citizenship when she ran off to join a “death cult”. Britain owes her nothing, agreed Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail. Begum hasn’t shown “an ounce of genuine regret” for joining Islamic State. In a 2019 interview she even implied that the murder of 22 people at a concert in Manchester in 2017 was justified due to civilian casualties of Western air strikes against Isis in Syria.
Begum must answer for her actions, said Kenan Malik in The Observer. But let’s make her do so in Britain rather than forcing others to take responsibility for her. The Government insists it hasn’t rendered her stateless, because her Bangladeshi parentage entitles her to apply for citizenship in that country (where she has never set foot). But that suggests a divisive form of “two-tier citizenship” under which some Britons enjoy more rights than others. Leaving Begum in limbo doesn’t solve anything, said Raffaello Pantucci in The Times. It’s comparable to America’s much-criticised policy of leaving people to fester in Guantánamo Bay. “The answer to terrorism is to treat it like an ordinary criminal act.” We seem able to do that with teenage terrorists at home, such as the boy from Cornwall who was recently convicted of being a key figure in an extreme right-wing group online. “It is not clear why we cannot with Begum.”