A Home Office lawyer has told an immigration tribunal hearing and appeal by Shamima Begum that just because people are “brainwashed” does not mean that they cannot be a threat to national security.
Sir James Eadie, KC said Begum had been living as part of the ISIS regime for four years and he said, “If you have been exposed for prolonged periods there is an almighty problem.”
Eadie pointed out that in one media interview Begum had said she had not been “fazed” by seeing the head of a victim of ISIS beheadings in a rubbish bin.
Begum, 23, is appealing against the then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid’s decision to revoke her British citizenship in 2019.
She was 15 when she left her home in Bethnal Green, east London, and travelled with two teenage friends to Turkey and then into territory in Syria controlled by the terrorist group ISIS.
At the close of Thursday’s proceedings Mr. Justice Jay said, “The commission will be reserving its judgment in this case, there will be a closed judgment and an open judgment.”
A ruling is expected in the New Year but the judge said he was concerned it would be leaked to the public before it was due to be published.
Jay warned all present: “It may be inhumane to Ms. Begum or may give her false hope depending upon the result.”
Begum and her friends Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15, travelled to the Middle East in 2015 but both Sultana and Abase were killed during the ISIS conflict.
She married a Dutch jihadi, Yago Riedijk, and had three children, who all died.
In February 2019 Begum was discovered by journalists, when she was nine months pregnant with her youngest child, in a Syrian refugee camp.
On Thursday extracts of a statement by Begum’s mother, Asma, were read by barrister Dan Squires, KC.
In it she said: “My child Shamima was taken from me in a way I did not understand at the time. I have never for a moment stopped loving my daughter and wanting her home with me.”
Mother Talks of Shamima’s Experience Having to Be ‘Confronted’
The statement went on, “I will stand with her and do everything I can for her future, but at the same time her sisters and I will accept and work with whatever steps are needed for Shamima’s experience over the past seven years to be confronted and turned in a different direction for her to be able to move forward with her life.”Eadie said the British security services believed people who travelled to Syria and aligned with ISIS, which was also known as ISIL, were “likely to have been radicalised, to have contributed to the continuance of ISIL as an entity, and may have received military training, fought with ISIL or taken part in terrorist attacks.”
In written submissions he said, “They were exposed to routine acts of extreme violence, which would be likely to have had the effect of desensitising individuals and encouraging them to view violent terrorist activity as an ‘acceptable and legitimate course of action.'”
He said she did not have to be a suicide bomber to have been a terrorist and said support for ISIS included “providing support, couriering, providing funds, and logistical support.”
Begum’s lawyers have claimed she was, “recruited, transported, transferred, harboured, and received in Syria for the purposes of ‘sexual exploitation’ and ‘marriage’ to an adult male.”
In her written submissions Begum’s lawyer, Samantha Knights, KC, said: “What evidence is available shows that rather than viewing the appellant as a victim, a child that was manipulated and exploited, the Home Secretary proceeded on the basis that she acted ‘voluntarily’ in travelling to Syria and aligning with Isis.”
But Eadie said: “You can be trafficked in the most ghastly, unacceptable way, exposed in the most unacceptable way, desensitised in the most unacceptable way and yet unfortunately … still be a security threat.”
He said: “If they do pose such a danger, how they came to pose that danger is not important. What matters is that they do in fact pose such a danger.”
Eadie said Begum had travelled to Syria “with her eyes open” about the brutality of ISIS.
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