SHAMIMA BEGUM LOSES BID FOR UK RETURN

COURT REJECTS I.S. BRIDE’S CITIZENSHIP CLAIM | ‘Begum went to Syria voluntarily to join IS’

- Martin Bentham

SHAMIMA BEGUM today suffered a major blow in her battle to return to the UK as a court rejected her claims that she was unlawfully stripped of her British citizenship.

Judges at the special immigration appeals commission said they did not accept that the Home Office had acted unlawfully in removing Ms Begum’s nationality because she was a trafficking victim when she travelled to Syria with two other Bethnal Green schoolgirls to join Islamic State in 2015. The court also rejected claims by Ms Begum, left, that the decision to strip her of her citizenship was pre-determined, in breach of equality duties and family rights, and taken without proper consideration of the risk she might pose on her return home.

Mr Justice Jay, the senior judge heading the three-strong panel making today’s judgment, said seven of the nine grounds used to try to overturn the Home Office’s decision were “technical” and had been dismissed but that the "real merits" of her case was that she had been trafficked into Syria for sexual exploitation.