LABOUR peer Jack McConnell has called for a young woman from London who ran away as a teenager to join Daesh in Syria to be allowed back into the UK.
The former First Minister gave his backing to the case for Shamima Begum, who is nine months pregnant, to be given help to return to Britain after a journalist tracked her down at a refugee camp.
Writing on Twitter yesterday, McConnell said: “These are the moments that define who we are. Shamima Begum was 15 when seduced into marrying an IS fighter. Her first two children have died. She’s British. She is still only 19. She should come home, face justice and be rehabilitated. To leave her there would be shameful.”
READ MORE: Unpalatable as it seems, justice must prevail – even when it comes to Daesh
Begum told The Times she wanted to return home as she feared for her baby’s life after her two older children had died. She did not express any remorse for her actions and said she was not fazed by seeing a severed head of a Daesh opponent in a bin.
UK Security Minister Ben Wallace yesterday ruled out launching a rescue mission, saying he would not put British lives at risk to “go and look for terrorists or former terrorists”, adding “actions have consequences”.
Begum was one of three schoolgirls, along with Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase, from Bethnal Green Academy who left the UK in February 2015. They flew from Gatwick Airport to Turkey and later crossed the border into Syria. Another girl, Sharmeena Begum, also from Bethnal Green but not related to Shamima, had travelled to Syria two months earlier. Sultana was reported to have been killed in an air strike in 2016.
Begum said she had recently heard the other two girls may still be alive.
She told The Times “I don’t regret coming here”, adding: “I’m not the same silly little 15-year-old schoolgirl who ran away from Bethnal Green four years ago.” She went on: “In the end, I just could not endure any more ... I just couldn’t take it. Now all I want to do is come home to Britain.”
Begum was married 10 days after arriving in Raqqa in 2015 to a Dutchman who had converted to Islam. She said: “Mostly it was a normal life in Raqqa, every now and then bombing and stuff. But when I saw my first severed head in a bin it didn’t faze me at all. It was from a captured fighter seized on the battlefield, an enemy of Islam. I thought only of what he would have done to a Muslim woman if he had the chance.”
The couple left Raqqa in 2017 and two weeks ago they escaped from Baghuz, Daesh’s last territory in eastern Syria. Begum’s husband surrendered to Syrian fighters, while she is now one of 39,000 people in a refugee camp in the north of the country.
Wallace said: “The UK advises against all travel to Syria and parts of Iraq. Everyone who returns from taking part in the conflict in Syria or Iraq must expect to be investigated by the police to determine if they have committed criminal offences, and to ensure that they do not pose a threat to our national security.”
He later told the BBC: “I’m not putting at risk British people’s lives to go and look for terrorists or former terrorists in a failed state. There’s consular services elsewhere in the region and the strong message this Government has given for many years is that actions have consequences.”
But the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Lord Carlile, said Begum will have to be accepted back into the UK if she has not become a national of any other country.
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