In her court fight against the decision to strip Shamima Begum of her British citizenship, Shamima Begum has lost.
The 23-year-old was at the centre of a controversy on whether or not she should be permitted to return to the UK.
Ms Begum and two other east London schoolgirls travelled to Syria to join the so-called Islamic State (IS) in 2015.
As a result, her British citizenship was revoked on national security grounds after she was found nine months pregnant in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019.
Ms Begum and her team have challenged the Home Office at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) in an appeal process.
Mr Justice Jay gave his update this morning.
He said: ‘The commission has fully recognised the considerable force in the submissions advanced on behalf of Ms Begum that the Secretary of State’s conclusion, on expert advice, that Ms Begum travelled voluntarily to Syria is as stark as it is unsympathetic.
‘Further, there is some merit in the argument that those advising the Secretary of State see this as a black and white issue, when many would say that there are shades of grey.’
He continued: ‘If asked to evaluate all the circumstances of Ms Begum’s case, reasonable people with knowledge of all the relevant evidence will differ, in particular in relation to the issue of the extent to which her travel to Syria was voluntary and the weight to be given to that factor in the context of all others.
‘Likewise, reasonable people will differ as to the threat she posed in February 2019 to the national security of the United Kingdom, and as to how that threat should be balanced against all countervailing considerations.
‘However, under our constitutional settlement these sensitive issues are for the Secretary of State to evaluate and not for the commission.’
The verdict came after one Government minister claimed Ms Begum ‘clearly represents a threat’.
Veterans’ affairs minister Johnny Mercer, asked this morning about whether the 23-year-old should be allowed to return to the UK, told GB News: ‘That’s a decision for the Home Secretary and previous home secretaries.
‘Certainly, Sajid Javid when he was home secretary made the decision to revoke her citizenship. That’s a decision for them.
‘Of course she clearly represents a threat. But there is a lot of information in that case that is not in the public domain.
‘I don’t think it is worth discussing it in public. I think those decisions are made in the courts and in the Home Office, and I’m sure they’ll come to the right conclusion.’
During a five-day hearing in November, Ms Begum’s lawyers said that the Home Office had a duty to investigate whether she was a victim of trafficking before stripping her of her British citizenship.
The specialist tribunal heard said that she was ‘recruited, transported, transferred, harboured and received in Syria for the purposes of ‘sexual exploitation’ and “marriage” to an adult male’.
At a previous hearing in February 2020, SIAC ruled that the decision to remove her British citizenship was lawful as Ms Begum was ‘a citizen of Bangladesh by descent’ at the time of the decision.
However, her barristers said in November that the decision made her ‘de facto stateless’, where she had no practical right to citizenship in Bangladesh, with Bangladeshi authorities stating they would not allow her into the country.
Barristers for the Home Office defended the Government’s decision, arguing that people trafficked to Syria and brainwashed can still be threats to national security, adding that Ms Begum expressed no remorse when she initially emerged from IS-controlled territory.
Sir James Eadie KC, for the department, said there was ‘no “credible suspicion” that she was a victim of trafficking or was at real and immediate risk of being trafficked prior to her travel from the UK’.
Sir James said that the then-home secretary Mr Javid took into account Ms Begum’s age, how she travelled to Syria – including likely online radicalisation – and her activity in Syria when making the decision to remove her British citizenship.