UK Set To Strip Teenage ‘ISIL Bride’ Shamima Begum Of Citizenship
A lawyer for the family of runaway British teenager Shamima Begum, who left London to join ISIL in Syria but now wants to return home, says UK authorities plan to revoke her citizenship.
Mohammed Tasnime Akunjee said in a Tweet on Tuesday that the family was “very disappointed with the Home Office’s intention to have an order made depriving Shamima of her citizenship”.
He said the family is “considering all legal avenues to challenge this decision”. Under the 1981 British Nationality Act, a person can be deprived of their citizenship if the home secretary is satisfied it would be “conducive to the public good” and they would not become stateless as a result.
Begum fled from her East London home in 2015 alongside two female friends to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) armed group.
Now 19, she says she has given birth to a baby and wants to come home.
Last week, in her first interview since leaving the UK, Begum told The Times newspaper that she was “not the same silly little 15-year-old schoolgirl who ran away from Bethnal Green four years ago”.
She refused to express regret over joining the group, however, and added she had been “OK with” beheadings carried out by ISIL adherents because she had heard it was allowed under the Islamic law.
