With all her previous attempts to return to Britain having failed, especially after her citizenship was stripped away, a new intelligence permit has opened the door to hope, possibly forShamima initiatedKnown as the “Bride of ISIS”.
The former British intelligence chief recorded an opinion completely contrary to all previous warnings about the return of the 23-year-old woman from the Al-Hol camp to the ISIS families in Syria.
Richard Barrett has warned that Begum would pose a greater threat to national security if left in Syria.
“You will become more dangerous.”
The former director of the British intelligence agency MI6’s global counter-terrorism agency MI6 also described that the assessment by MI5, Britain’s Fifth Office of Military Intelligence, of the security risks Begum could create is “shallow and inappropriate “.
Furthermore, he wrote in a report prepared by the former “ISIS bride’s” legal team, on the possibility that the young woman would become a serious threat to the country if she remained inside the “ISIS” camp, underlining that she was deprived of the her nationality as an individual with no explanation of how she turned from a teenager into a member A of a fearsome terrorist organization.
He added that his country has provided a different response from other countries to the problem of returning citizens who have traveled to join ISIS, compared to the United States, Germany and France.
He also stressed that “countries that have absorbed and returned their citizens from the teeth of ISIS are no less secure than countries that have not.”
He also highlighted the possibility that, from a national security perspective, refusing to deport individuals from ISIS camps in Syria could be more dangerous in the medium to long term than sending them home and subjecting them to prosecution, rehabilitation and reintegration. He believed that these people will become more dangerous due to their dissatisfaction with their life there amidst the malnutrition, lack of health services and psychological damage they live with on a daily basis.
His children are dead
Interestingly, Shamima, who is staying in a camp for the organization’s displaced families in northeastern Syria, is still trying hard after her plea for her country’s forgiveness and restoration of her nationality.
Her story has split the views of British intelligence into two, one with her returning in hopes of reinstating her, especially since she was a child when she joined the organisation, and another completely dismissing this theory as it is of great danger to the country, and prefers that he stays in the Al-Hol camp.
Last week, her lawyers appealed the British government’s decision to strip her of her citizenship. They told a London court she may have been a ‘child smuggled victim’, as she was 15 when she left London airport in 2015 with two of her companions, to later marry an ISIS fighter and give birth to a 3 children from him, all died in infancy.
While the British government stripped her of her nationality on national security grounds in 2019, she was found shortly after in a detention camp in Syria.
Begum, now 23, appealed the decision in five days of hearings before the Special Immigration Appeals Board, a special court that hears appeals against decisions to strip her citizenship on grounds of national security.
