The family of Shamima Begum has formally started court challenges against the home secretary, saying Sajid Javid’s decision to strip the teenager of her citizenship is unfair because hundreds of Britons who went to Islamic State territory have been allowed back.
Begum fled her east London family for Syria in February 2015, aged 15, along with two school friends after reading terrorist propaganda online. There she married a terrorist fighter and had three children, all of whom died as infants.
After she emerged in a refugee camp in Syria pleading to come home, but seemingly ambivalent about the atrocities committed by Isis, Javid controversially stripped her of her British citizenship.
Appeals against that decision have now been lodged with the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) and another challenge to the home secretary’s actions will be lodged with the high court on Thursday, the Guardian understands.
The appeal brought by Begum’s mother claims the home secretary’s decision means Begum’s life is in danger, leaving her suffering degrading treatment in a Syrian refugee camp, and facing threats from Isis extremists.
The solicitor Tasnime Akunjee, who has represented Begum’s family since 2015, claims the government decision breaks several articles of the European convention on human rights. “We are arguing the decision is wrong because it renders Shamima Begum stateless, it puts her life at risk, exposes her to inhumane and degrading treatment, and breaches her right to family life,” he said.
“The decision was disproportionate. To strip her citizenship, the home secretary has to balance the risk she poses versus the effect on her. It endangers her life, her child died, and we know she was threatened by Isis supporters in the camp and had to be moved.
February 2015
At the age of 15, Shamima Begum flees her home in Bethnal Green, east London. She travels with schoolfriends Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana. The three intend to meet another friend, Sharmeena Begum – no relation of Shamima – who had travelled to Syria in late 2014.
CCTV footage shows the girls walking through Gatwick airport, where they boarded a flight to Turkey. There they are picked up by smugglers and taken across the border to an Isis base in northern Syria. Once there they move into a women’s house in Raqqa and apply to marry.
July 2015
The families of the girls say that two of them have married Isis fighters, without disclosing which. They say they are distraught at the news.
It later emerges that Begum had married 27-year-old Yago Riedijk, an Isis fighter from the Netherlands, 10 days after arriving in Raqqa. Soon afterwards she became pregnant with her first child, a daughter named Sarayah.
July 2016
Abase marries an 18-year-old Australian jihadist, Abdullah Elmir. He was later reported by intelligence agencies to have been killed by a coalition airstrike.
August 2016
Sultana’s family say that they believe she had been killed in an airstrike in Raqqa in May 2016.
January 2017
Begum and her family flee Raqqa as Isis retreats and head south-east to the town of Mayadin. She has another child, a son called Jerah. Later, the family moves again as Isis is pushed back.
June 2018
Begum sees her two surviving classmates, Sharmeena Begum and Abase, for the last time.
Late 2018
Jerah dies, aged eight months, of malnutrition and an unknown illness. Her daughter dies soon after, aged one year and nine months.
February 2019
Begum, who is heavily pregnant, gives an interview to the Times, in which she says that she should be allowed to return to the UK to raise her unborn third child. She gives birth a few days later. The Home Office tells her family that her citizenship will be revoked.
March 2019
Jarrah, Begum’s new born son, dies in a Syrian refugee camp. The child was three weeks old.
“In her camp another family had their tent burnt down killing their children.”
The decision, the court will be asked to accept, is all the more wrong because the government itself has admitted that hundreds of others who went to Syria have been permitted to return.
Akunjee said: “The government has accepted that 400 people have picked up a gun and actively fought for Isis and then been allowed back to Britain. So how can it be proportionate for a 19-year-old girl who had a child not to be allowed to return, when the others have been allowed to return?”
The high court action seeks a judicial review accusing the home secretary of failing to take into account facts as he took key decisions. Javid will not reconsider his decision despite Bangladesh saying it will not grant Begum citizenship, thus rendering her stateless if the British decision stands. This would be contrary to the law, it is argued. Lawyers for the family say the death of her third child last month should also be taken into account.
The SIAC case is complicated by the fact that Begum is incommunicado.
Akunjee’s attempt to see her in the al-Roj camp to get her formal instructions failed when authorities refused him permission.
Furthermore, a second law firm claims Begum has instructed it through a third party and it, too, has lodged an appeal at SIAC, with both applications received on Tuesday.
At SIAC, judges can sit in secret and hear details of intelligence from security agencies such as MI5 or MI6.
British security officials believe anyone who willingly went to Isis-controlled lands and spent extensive time there, in theory, poses a risk. But they have also warned evidence of involvement in violence or training may be hard to secure. Ultimately, the decision, they believe, on exclusion from the UK is a political one for the home secretary.
Akunjee said: “We are trying to stop the home secretary continuing his decision that puts her life at risk, her human dignity at risk, when it is unnecessary in the circumstances.”
In February a letter from Javid to Begum’s mother contained news of the decision to revoke her citizenship. In it the home secretary wrote that he made such an order, believing that because her parents were of Bangladeshi heritage the teenager could apply for citizenship of that country.
This is crucial because, while the law bars him from making a person stateless, it allows him to remove citizenship if he can show Begum has behaved “in a manner which is seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK” and he has “reasonable grounds for believing that the person is able, under the law of a country or territory outside the UK, to become a national of such a country or territory”.
