Lawyers for ISIS bride Shamima Begum have said they think she will win the right to return to the UK at the Supreme Court after appeal judges yesterday ruled against her appeal over the removal of her British citizenship.
Experts have revealed the tactics her legal team are likely to use in their attempt to overthrow the ruling, saying the issue of her effective ‘statelessness’ – not being a citizen of any country – could be grounds for another appeal.
Outside court yesterday, her solicitor David Furner said: ‘We are not going to stop fighting until she does get justice and until she is safely back home.’
Begum travelled to Syria to join ISIS in 2015 aged 15 and her citizenship was revoked on national security grounds shortly after she was found in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019.
Last year, the 24-year-old lost a challenge against the decision at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), which said the removal of her citizenship was lawful.
Lawyers for ISIS bride Shamima Begum (pictured with her now passed week-old son) have said they think she will win the right to return to the UK at the Supreme Court after appeal judges yesterday ruled against her appeal over the removal of her British citizenship
ISIS bride Begum pictured as she is imprisoned in the Al-Roj camp in Syria
CCTV from on February 23, 2015, shows Shamima Begum passing through security barriers at Gatwick Airport before
Begum’s lawyers brought a bid to overturn that decision at the Court of Appeal, with the Home Office opposing the challenge. In a ruling yesterday morning, three judges dismissed her bid.
The jihadi bride’s legal team now look set to seek permission to appeal to the Supreme Court, and if this fails they could seek to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
One of Ms Begum’s lawyers, Gareth Peirce, claimed her ‘indefinite arbitrary detention’ ran contrary to international law after the ruling yesterday.
‘She and others, other women and children, are in what is not a refugee camp but a prison camp, and that is conceded by the United Kingdom, which has stated to the UN that it agrees that Geneva Convention articles apply,’ Ms Peirce said.
‘Unlawful as that is, there is no exit. There is no way that she can escape from unlawful imprisonment.’ Ms Peirce later said that conditions in the al-Roj camp where Ms Begum remains had worsened. The Red Cross has described the camp as ‘grim’ and ‘extremely volatile’.
A hearing in 2020 ruled that removing Begum’s British citizenship was legal as she was ‘a citizen of Bangladesh by descent’ when the decision was made. But her barristers argued that this made her ‘de facto stateless’ as authorities in Bangladesh have said they will not let her in the country.
After yesterday’s ruling, extradition barrister Alexander dos Santos told Sky News: ‘Rather than the Court of Appeal saying she was not de facto stateless, the Court of Appeal has essentially said that wasn’t something the home secretary [then Sajid Javid] needed to determine. It wasn’t the legal test being applied.
‘That potentially gives some scope to Shamima Begum’s lawyers to… push that issue and see if they can get back before the Supreme Court a second time on issues about whether or not that, in reality, meant the decision would have made her stateless and therefore in breach of international law.
‘So there is at least some potential for there to be an attempt to take things further, but as to whether or not that argument has really been thrashed out enough for the courts, or has enough of a legal foundation, for the Supreme Court to reconsider it is something for her lawyers now to decide having digested the decision.’
Shamima Begum appearing in a 2021 interview, where she begged for forgiveness and insisted she was a victim – not a terrorist or a criminal
The former jihadi bride has been battling to come back to Britain since 2019 after she was discovered in a Syrian refugee camp
Speaking to yesterday, Dr Marianne Wade, a Reader in criminal justice at Birmingham Law School, said Begum’s legal team would seek an appeal.
She told : ‘Her team will it seems fight on. Despite her public notoriety, they likely also see value in continuing to force the public to ask themselves whether it is right that a – as they see her – vulnerable, groomed and exploited 15 year old should be judged as she has been and have to suffer such harsh, life-long consequences.
‘This is perhaps as much a political as legal argument and at its heart a battle between the Government and judiciary.
‘For Shamima Begum, of course, it is considerably more urgent than this evergreen, theoretical debate.’
Giving her ruling yesterday, Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr said: ‘It could be argued the decision in Ms Begum’s case was harsh. It could also be argued that Ms Begum is the author of her own misfortune.
‘But it is not for this court to agree or disagree with either point of view. Our only task is to assess whether the deprivation decision was unlawful.
‘We have concluded it was not and the appeal is dismissed.’
Baroness Carr, sitting with Lord Justice Bean and Lady Justice Whipple, said any arguments over the consequences of the unanimous judgment, including any bid to appeal at the Supreme Court, will be adjourned for seven days.
Begum’s Dutch jihadi husband Yago Riedijk, who died fighting for ISIS in Syria
Following the decision, director of human rights charity Reprieve Maya Foa said: ‘This whole episode shames ministers who would rather bully a child victim of trafficking than acknowledge the UK’s responsibilities.
‘Stripping citizenship in bulk and abandoning British families in desert prisons is a terrible, unsustainable policy designed to score cheap political points. Rather than demonise Shamima Begum, ministers should reckon with the institutional failures that enabled Isis to traffic vulnerable British women and girls.
‘What the courts have recognised today is that this was a political decision. It is now a political problem, and the government holds the key to solving it.
‘If the government thinks that Shamima Begum has committed a crime, she should be prosecuted in a British court. Citizenship stripping is not the answer.’
Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary who took the decision to deprive Ms Begum of her British citizenship, greeted the judges’ ruling yesterday. ‘I welcome today’s court ruling, which has again upheld my decision to remove an individual’s citizenship on national security grounds,’ he wrote yesterday.
‘This is a complex case but Home Secretaries should have the power to prevent anyone entering our country who is assessed to pose a threat to it.’
Former immigration minister Mr Jenrick said: ‘This is the right decision. British citizenship is a great privilege. People who hate our country, threaten it, associate with those who murder our citizens and armed forces should not rely upon its blessings. National security must always come first.’
Ms Begum is currently living at the al-Roj camp in northern Syria, where conditions have been described by the Red Cross as ‘extremely volatile’.
She was originally able to cross the Syrian border with the help of a Canadian spy named Mohammed Al Rasheed, according to reports.
In a BBC podcast series, she said she was told to ‘pack nice clothes so you can dress nicely for your husband’.
Just ten days after arriving in the city of Raqqa, Ms Begum, who is of Bangladeshi heritage, was married to a Dutchman named Yago Riedijk, who had converted to Islam.
They had three children together, who all later died from malnourishment or disease. They were a one-year-old girl, a three-month-old boy and newborn son.