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The author is a former local government councilor and special adviser and author of ‘My Hair is Pink Under This Veil’.
The grainy CCTV images of 15-year-old Shamima Begum and her friends at an Istanbul bus station on their way to join Isis in Syria will forever be etched in my mind. At the time, in 2015, I was an independent councilor in Tower Hamlets, where he lived, and served on the governing administration. One girl reminded me of my own young daughter. Their departure haunted me: who had radicalized them under the noses of their parents, teachers, police and local authorities?
Begum is currently in a legal battle to have her British citizenship restored, having been assessed by MI5 as a threat to national security. But the apparent ease with which the girls traveled still raises important security questions: the treatment of Begum, now 23 and imprisoned in al-Roj camp in northern Syria, shows how easily a potential trafficking victim can be criminalized. can be
The UK is not the only country struggling with how to handle people with suspected links to the Isis regime. France has refused to deport suspected foreign fighters from Iraq and Syria, instead leaving them to be prosecuted by Baghdad. Germany conducts its own criminal prosecution and attempts to deradicalize and reintegrate returnees. Turkey launched a forced repatriation program three years ago to close its prisons for foreign jihadists, with its interior minister, Suleiman Soylu, protesting that his country was “not a hotel” for Isis detainees.
The difficulty in establishing criminal intent is a product of the environment people are exposed to. In Begum’s case, this included ISIS rhetoric and doctrine of extremist ideologies. He claimed in an interview last year that the only crime he committed was being dumb enough to join Isis.
A month after she and her friends left the UK, four other female students aged 15 and 16 at Bethnal Green Academy were made wards of the court on the orders of a judge who was concerned that “children” might “take steps. Leave the jurisdiction and travel to conflict zones.” Do”. Their passports were revoked by this court order, due to which they were traveling abroad.
This approach is in stark contrast to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission hearings underway in London this week. Security services have argued that Begum knew what she was doing when she joined Isis at the age of 15 – she is still a dependent and a child in the eyes of the law.
Unfortunately, the police intervention aimed at checking the Begum and her friends Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abeez before they traveled failed completely. The girls were given letters requesting parental consent for interviews with law enforcement but never gave them to their parents. The Metropolitan Police later apologized to the family but, due to their negligence, the fate of the girls was partially sealed. Kadiza is believed to have been killed in an airstrike in Syria. Amira is also believed to be dead.
The same year the girls left England, I stood as an independent mayoral candidate for Tower Hamlets. I called for a public inquiry into how the schoolgirls became radicalized and also called for a serious case review, a motion that was never even discussed.
Begum’s barrister, Samantha Knights Casey, said the police had a responsibility to help her return to the UK if she was a victim of human trafficking. “At its heart, this case concerns a 15-year-old British child who was persuaded, influenced and influenced, along with his friends, by a determined and effective Isis propaganda machine,” she told the tribunal this week. Earlier this year, it was reported that Scotland Yard had discovered that a people smuggler working for Canadian intelligence was responsible for helping Begum and her friends to Syria.
Permanently stripping Begum of her citizenship, as the UK government wants to do, will not help protect people or young people at risk of radicalisation.
A historical case review explains why she and her friends traveled to Syria and helped prevent other vulnerable young people from following the same path. In Denmark, preventing radicalization involves “multi-agency” collaboration between social services, schools, healthcare providers, police and intelligence services.
Parents in Tower Hamlets have told me they fear the person or people responsible for grooming Begum may still be out there. If the government wants to protect young people from extremism they need to start in Bethnal Green – and how we have failed in our duty of care.
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