Shamima Begum loses court fight to have her British citizenship back

Begum was left ‘stateless’ after the UK refused to let her return from Syria (Picture: PA)

A court has thrown out Shamima Begum’s bid to overturn the decision to strip her of UK citizenship.

Three judges including the chief justice, Sue Carr, unanimously dismissed the appeal on Friday.

Justice Carr accepted there were arguments to be made the government’s decision was ‘harsh’ or reasonable but that ‘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’, Justice Carr said. ‘We have concluded it was not, and the appeal is dismissed.’

A commission which previously ruled on her case was ‘correct to find that the deprivation power was exercised in a proportionate manner’, the judge added.

Begum, 24, travelled from east London to Syria as a 15-year-old schoolgirl to join Islamic State (IS), marrying a 27-year-old Dutch national.

She was stripped of her UK citizenship and banned from entering Britain in 2019 after she was found in a refugee camp in the wake of IS’ military collapse.

Justice Sue Carr delivered a summary of the ruling by three Court of Appeals judges on Friday

In February last year, the special immigration appeals commission (Siac) accepted there was credible that Begum had been ‘recruited, transferred and then harboured for the purpose of sexual exploitation’.

But it ruled the home secretary, which at the time was Sajid Javid, had broad discretion in the decision.

Begum’s lawyers then launched an appeal insisting Mr Javid had breached anti-slavery laws by failing to consider whether Begum had been groomed and trafficked.

But Sir James Eadie KC, for the Home Office, argued Javid ‘was well aware of the possibility’.

Begum previously claimed she regrets joining Islamic State and feels ‘ashamed’ (Picture: PA)

‘The only question which therefore remained was what weight to attribute to these factors’, Mr Eadie said. ‘That was a matter for the secretary of state.’

The Court of Appeal’s judgment, which was summarised on Friday by Justice Carr, said the home secretary was entitled to decide Begum was too dangerous to return to the UK.

The judges argued that the risk posed by Begum to the UK as an adult could be considered separately to the question of whether she was trafficked, which happened four years before she was found.

While documents given to Mr Javid to inform his decision ‘did not discuss the case’ in terms of specific trafficking laws, the home secertary ‘was aware of the circumstances of Ms Begum’s departure’, Justice Carr said.

Begum was found in a camp after the military collapse of Islamic State (Picture: Getty)

The documents ‘powerfully expressed the view that people who were children when they went to align with [IS] should be considered first and foremost as victims’, she added.

The judge continued: ‘The secretary of state took into account the possibility that Ms Begum had been a victim of trafficking.

‘That assessment was kept under review after February 2019.

‘Siac was entitled to find that the issue of whether Ms Begum had travelled voluntarily was within the expertise of the intelligence agencies.

‘Voluntariness of travel was not a binary question and Ms Begum may well have been influenced and manipulated by others but still had made a calculated decision to travel to Syria and align with [IS].

‘The assessement of the national security risk was, in our judgment, a question of evaluation and judgment entrusted by Parliament to the secretary of state.’

A semi-secret court ruled in 2020 that Ms Begum, who was born in the UK to Bangladeshi immigrants, could successfully ask Bangladesh to make her a citizen.

While Bangladesh also refused to let her in, Mr Javid was not obliged to consider the possibility of making her stateless in 2019, the Court of Appeal found.

Ms Begum still lives in the al-Roj detention camp in northern Syria and is expected to remain there for the foreseeable future.

Last year she said she was ‘ashamed’ to have joined the group and regrets her decision.

This is a developing news story, more to follow soon… Check back shortly for further updates.

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