Shamima Begum must be returned to the UK and given a fair trial
(Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)
When Shamima Begum left Britain in 2015 to join the Islamic State, she was a 15-year-old child.
The claim, then, that she ‘renounced’ her British citizenship doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Legally she did not have the power to do so. The state, at that age, does not allow suffrage, which means she could not consent to the system of government she lived under. Whether or not you think that is right is another matter. Legally, she remains a British citizen – and she has at least one charge to answer in Britain. But even if we consider her attempt to join the Islamic State a declaration of allegiance, IS is not and never has been considered a state, and one cannot make oneself stateless, subject to no law, just because one feels like it.
Moreover, in addition to the possible charge of trying to change her nationality illegally, she also stands accused of being a member of, or at the very least supporting, a group the UK considers to be a terrorist organisation. Having done so as a British citizen, she must face that charge here.
For her to have fled the UK, it also stands to reason that she was radicalised in the UK. That means she has more questions to answer: potentially further charges, but also questions around how this happened. It is vital that the UK prevents more radicalisation of a similar nature, and Ms Begum may be a valuable source of information to help prevent it.
Ultimately, whether or not she shows remorse for her actions is not really the point. If she has committed crimes, and potentially on British soil, she should stand trial here. The argument that we should not pursue her and return her to the UK doesn’t stand up; we don’t just shrug our shoulders and think ‘you’re not our problem anymore, get lost and don’t come back,’ if the subject who has fled is a drug dealer, rapist or murderer. Why is this any different? It sends the wrong message: that Britain won’t bring its own to justice if they leave the country. That is shirking responsibility.
There is also the matter of her unborn child. It is innocent, regardless of where it was conceived, and as the child of a British citizen, the state has a duty to ensure its safety and wellbeing. No good will come of leaving it, and its mother, in the Middle East. The child has a right to a life in the nation of its mother’s birth. We should also give its mother, as much as we may dislike to do so, a fair trial, and if convicted of any crime, a fair sentence, so that the child at least has a fair chance of having contact with biological family members in this country in its formative years. As much as many yearn to make this woman’s life miserable, we must not allow the child to suffer unduly for her crimes.
That yearning is troubling. The national perception of Ms Begum and other former IS adherents seems to be one of extreme violence and wickedness, but that therefore, no form of violence and wickedness against them is too much. ‘Drone her’ people tweet, ‘let her rot!’
Of course, vengeance is a pull. But when we talk of ‘British values’ (as, for some reason, we so often do) I am often struck that people very rarely mention justice. Tolerance, openness, multiculturalism, the NHS, democracy, these are all rolled out far too often by politicians and plaudit seekers. But it is our justice system that is, or was, our real crown jewel. The principle of Habeus Corpus, of a jury of one’s peers, of combining punishment with rehabilitation, it’s all sacred, and it is the right of all British citizens regardless of the crime of which they stand accused.
That so many people are prepared to abandon this, and, what’s more, to suspend it for a pregnant teenager, chills me. It is thoroughly un-British. It is barbaric, and we do not respond to barbarism with barbarism of our own. How can we declare ourselves better than the soldiers of the Islamic State if we condemn women and children to death, and without a trial at that? Inaction in this instance is no better than the act of killing.
When we disregard the sanctity of our justice system, we leave the door open for its abuse. The Ministry of Justice has suffered 40% cuts in the past ten years, which, by extension, has led to miscarriages of justice and widespread dissatisfaction. That can only happen if people allow it to happen, and we have allowed it because we have forgotten, or ignored, how important justice is.
Shamima Begum left the country illegally, joined a terrorist organisation illegally, and is now pregnant with a combatant’s child. None of that removes her British citizenship. None of that absolves the British justice system of its duty to try her, nor the British state of funding that trial. We cannot remove her citizenship, nor condemn her without trial, for the danger of the precedence that would set. And we cannot, in all conscience, abandon her unborn child.
We must demand that she is returned to the United Kingdom, to answer her countrymen for what she has done.
