Begum may have been child trafficking victim, court hears

Shamima Begum, who left Britain as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State (IS) in Syria, was likely to have been the victim of child trafficking and sexual exploitation, a court has heard.

- Matthew Weaver

Lawyers acting for the 23-year-old began a new appeal yesterday against the removal of her British citizenship at a hearing of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac).

They said she was lured to Syria in 2015 when she left east London as a 15-year-old GCSE student, along with two school friends.

Once in Syria she married an IS fighter and gave birth to three children, all of whom died as infants.

When Begum was discovered in a Syrian camp in 2019, the then-home secretary, Sajid Javid, prevented her returning to the UK by revoking her UK citizenship.

Samantha Knights KC, representing Begum, said that this "over-hasty" decision had made Begum "effectively an exile for life".

She told the hearing yesterday: "This case concerns a British child aged 15 who was persuaded, influenced and affected with her friends by a determined and effective Isis propaganda machine."

Begum's lawyers said in written arguments that the Home Office had revoked her citizenship "without seeking to investigate and determine, still less consider, whether she was a child victim of trafficking". They also argued there was overwhelming evidence that Begum had been "recruited, transported, transferred, harboured and received in Syria for the purposes of sexual exploitation".