Shamima Begum, the British-born citizen who traveled to Syria as a schoolgirl to join ISIL (ISIS), has lost her recent appeal against having her citizenship revoked.
Her lawyers vowed on Wednesday to keep fighting, saying the case was “far from over”.
The British government stripped Begum of her citizenship in 2019 shortly after she was found in a detention center in Syria.
Public opinion is divided over her case. Some say she should remain disfellowshipped while others believe she should be tried in a UK court for joining ISIL.
Here’s what you should know about the case:
Who is Shamima Begum?
Begum was born in east London in 1999 to Bangladeshi parents.
She is one of three students who traveled to IS-controlled Syria in 2015. She was 15 then.
In Syria, she married an ISIL fighter and had two children, both of whom died in infancy.
Her British citizenship was revoked on national security grounds shortly after she was found nine months pregnant in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019.
In an interview with The Times newspaper in 2019, Begum said she was tired of life on the battlefield and afraid for her unborn child. This baby named Jarrah died of pneumonia later that year.
Begum, now 23, is being held in al-Roj camp in north-eastern Syria, which is home to more than 2,000 people.
She has asked the UK government to be repatriated to London with her family.
In this three frame combination of still images from CCTV, Kadiza Sultana, Shamima Begum and Amira Abase are seen at Gatwick Airport on February 23, 2015 [File: AP Photo/Metropolitan Police]
Why and how did Begum lose her British citizenship?
Citizenship is a legal status which “means that a person has the right to live in a state and that state cannot refuse him entry or deport him,” according to the Oxford University Migration Observatory.
This status can be conferred at birth or, in some states, can be obtained “through naturalization”.
However, in 2019 a British judge said British citizenship was “not an absolute right for everyone. It can be removed by the Secretary of State, but not if doing so would render the subject stateless.”
In Begum’s case, a British court ruled in 2019 that having her citizenship revoked was lawful because Begum “holds Bangladeshi citizenship” through descent through her parents.
Bangladesh said no and said she would not be allowed to enter the country.
Also in 2019, then-UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid vowed to prevent anyone who joined ISIL from returning, saying Begum was a threat to national security.
“You are a dual British-Bangladeshi citizen who has previously traveled to Syria and joined ISIL. It is understood that your return to the UK would pose a risk to the national security of the UK,” read a letter the Foreign Secretary’s cabinet sent to her family in 2019.
Begum has never held Bangladeshi citizenship and has never visited Bangladesh – and officials in the South Asian nation have said they will not issue her citizenship.
“I have citizenship… and if you take it away from me, I have nothing. I don’t think they’re allowed to,” Begum told the BBC in 2019.
“This is a life changing decision; You didn’t even speak to me.”
victims of human trafficking
Three Court of Appeal judges ruled in 2020 that Begum could return to the UK to challenge the revocation.
However, the case was taken to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2021 that while Begum has the right to challenge the decision, he should do so due to “security concerns” from outside the UK.
Begum’s legal team accused the UK Home Office of failing to investigate whether she was a “victim of child trafficking”.
In February 2023, the judge ruled that finding that Begum may have been trafficked was insufficient for her appeal to succeed.
“The implication, the outcome we are faced with, is that no British child who has been trafficked outside the UK will be protected by the UK state where the Home Secretary invokes national security,” her lawyer Daniel Furner said after the decision.
Begum’s lawyers have argued that Begum and her friends’ entry into Syria was facilitated by a Canadian agent working for ISIL.
A book published in August last year examining information-sharing between Britain, Canada and other allies claimed that the Canadian agent’s role in Begum’s case was later covered up by police and British security services.
The secret history of the Five Eyes by Richard Kerbaj, a former security correspondent for the Sunday Times, led to calls for an official investigation into Begum’s case. Canada and the UK declined to comment on the allegations, as is usual with intelligence agencies.
What’s next?
Furner told reporters that his team “will appeal the decision” of Wednesday’s verdict.
Begum must take the case straight to the Court of Appeal in London if she wants to challenge the decision, under the legislation that covers the court.
“Their lawyers have even suggested that it could also go to the European Court of Human Rights,” said Al Jazeera’s Nadim Baba, reporting from London.
A spokesman for Britain’s Home Office, the Home Office, welcomed the verdict.
“The Government’s priority remains to maintain the security of the UK and we will vigorously defend any decision taken in this regard,” the spokesman said.