LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th July, 2020) A legal ruling to permit UK-born "IS bride" Shamima Begum to return home to contest the decision to revoke her citizenship is perverse and will impede the fight against global terrorism, Steven Woolfe, a former member of the European Parliament told Sputnik on Thursday.
"I think it's a perverse and appalling decision that's overruled a mandated government Minister over a difficult but correct decision on removing the citizenship of an international terrorist," he said.
Then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid stripped her of UK citizenship soon after she was found in a refugee camp in Syria last February, five years after the now 20-year-old traveled from the United Kingdom to Syria to marry Dutch-born Islamist Yago Riedijk and joined the Islamic State terror group (IS, banned in Russia).
Javid criticized the Court of Appeal's ruling in a tweeted statement, arguing that her return, as well as that of other members of terrorist organizations, would create a national security risk. He also warned it would be impossible to remove her once she is back in the UK.
Woolfe echoed the minister's concerns, saying the ruling could create huge barriers for the UK in terms of being able to deal effectively with terrorists.
He said this "gives another weapon to international terrorists who want to create a home-based terrorist section in the UK, knowing that those terrorists, if they commit crimes, will not be tried in the countries where they commit those crimes, but rather here where the system is so much more lenient."
The ex-lawmaker, now director of the Centre for Migration and Economic Prosperity, added that sympathy for Begum's situation and claims that she was "groomed" into joining IS were unwarranted, given her role as an enforcer of the group's morality police, according to sources cited by the Daily Telegraph. She also said the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, in which 22 people were killed, was justified.
"The fact is she took the decision to leave this country and join a well known terrorist group. It didn't take a 'Brain of Britain' to understand that ISIS [IS] was already banned throughout the world," Woolfe said.
"And not only that, when she was out there she took part and helped give support to terrorists committing atrocities and then after the Manchester bombings she said the attacks were justified. Is this the sort of person we can believe was truly groomed and didn't have a mind of her own?"
This marks the first victory for Begum who argued that she had been rendered stateless. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission initially rejected her case, claiming that she was a citizen of Bangladesh by descent at the time the UK government had made its decision.
In June, Begum's barrister Tom Hickman insisted in a Court of Appeal hearing that his client should be permitted to return to the UK to contest her case, claiming Javid's decision had exposed her to a risk of removal to Bangladesh or Iraq, where there was a possibility of extra-judicial killing by the police or a "wholly unfair and predetermined" trial and a death sentence.
