ISIS bride Shamima Begum loses crucial legal bid to be allowed to return to UK
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Notorious ISIS bride Shamima Begum has lost her appeal against the controversial decision to remove her British citizenship three years ago.
Ms Begum travelled to Syria to join Islamic State (IS) in February 2015 with two other schoolgirls from east London.
Her citizenship was revoked in February 2019 for national security reasons. At the time she was nine months pregnant and living in a Syrian refugee camp.
READ MORE: Shamima Begum and ISIS hubby should be allowed to 'rebuild life in UK' says his mum
Now 23, she has been fighting against that decision. Her lawyers argued the Home Office had a duty to investigate whether she was a victim of trafficking before taking her citizenship away.
A specialist tribunal in November heard how Ms Begum was "recruited, transported, transferred, harboured and received in Syria for the purposes of ‘sexual exploitation’ and ‘marriage’ to an adult male".
A previous hearing in February 2020 upheld the removal of her citizenship as she was "a citizen of Bangladesh by descent" at the time.
However, lawyers argued she had no practical right to citizenship in Bangladesh, meaning that ruling rendered her essentially stateless.
Home Office lawyers argued that people brainwashed and trafficked to Syria can still pose a threat to national security.
They also claimed Ms Begum showed no remorse when she initially left IS-controlled territory.
Sir James Eadie KC, for the department, said then-home secretary Sajid Javid took into account her age, how she travelled to Syria and her activity while there when making the decision to remove her citizenship.
Veterans’ affairs minister Johnny Mercer told GB News he thinks "she clearly represents a threat".
He said: “Of course she clearly represents a threat. But there is a lot of information in that case that is not in the public domain.
“I don’t think it is worth discussing it in public. I think those decisions are made in the courts and in the Home Office, and I’m sure they’ll come to the right conclusion.”
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