MI5 described Shamima Begum‘s media blitz as ‘self-serving PR’ aimed at swaying public opinion in the run-up to her British citizenship appeal, it emerged today – as experts warned her court battle could cost the taxpayer more than £5million.
The jihadi bride today lost her bid to strike down the Government’s decision to revoke her UK nationality for travelling to join ISIS aged 15, prompting her lawyers to promise they would challenge the decision and vow the case is ‘nowhere near over’.
In the run-up to this morning’s court hearing, Ms Begum has made numerous media appearances – including a magazine cover, TV interviews and a 10-part BBC podcast series.
The dim view MI5 took of this publicity campaign was revealed today in the copy of the judgment written by Mr Justice Jay. ‘In September and November 2021, Ms Begum was interviewed by Good Morning Britain and Sky News,’ it read.
She denied reports in the media that she had sewn suicide vests or been part of ISIL’s [ISIS’s] morality police and claimed that her activities were limited to being a housewife and mother.
‘The MI5 assessment is that many of the comments Ms Begum made in her later interviews are likely to have been self-serving and an attempt to obtain favourable media coverage in the run-up to this appeal.’
Shamima Begum appearing this year on The Shamima Begum Story, a 10-part BBC podcast
The jihadi bride appearing on Good Morning Britain in an exclusive interview in September 2021
The jihadi bride was 15 when she and two other east London schoolgirls fled to join ISIS in February 2015, with Ms Begum marrying a 23-year-old ISIS fighter ten days after arriving in Syria.
Her British citizenship was revoked on national security grounds by the former home secretary Sajid Javid shortly after she was found, nine months pregnant, in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019.
Ms Begum, now 23, brought a challenge against the Home Office at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), where her lawyers argued she should be allowed to return to Britain on the basis she was ‘a victim of child sex trafficking’.
However, the Home Office defended the decision by saying the security services ‘continue to assess’ that she poses a risk to the UK.
Judges dismissed Ms Begum’s challenge today, ruling that while there was a ‘credible suspicion’ that Ms Begum was trafficked to Syria for ‘sexual exploitation’ this was not enough for her appeal to succeed.
Mr Justice Jay added that whether she posed a threat to national security was a decision for politicians, not the courts.
With Ms Begum’s lawyers vowing to appeal the ruling, a legal expert warned the taxpayer would continue to receive a massive bill for legal aid costs.
Paul Fulcher, who runs specialist firm Legal Costs Experts, has predicted the case could end up costing taxpayers more than £5million when all legal costs are accounted for.
He told MailOnline today: ‘It’s going to go on. Her lawyers have come out and said they’re going to keep fighting. Ultimately they get paid win, lose or draw.
‘The taxpayer has probably already paid out millions and it’s likely to be millions more.
‘KCs can charge £5,000 a day, although legal aid doesn’t usually pay out at those rates. Then there’s the solicitors and a massive team behind them too.
‘It’s going to keep racking up and racking up. It’s a golden egg.
‘Ultimately at some point someone needs to call a halt to it so the taxpayer doesn’t keep having to pay out.’
The former East London schoolgirl gave an interview to GB News last year
Begum on Sky News in 2019, when she said of ISIS: ‘It was nice at first, like in the videos’
Today’s ruling has been welcomed by the Government.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman said: ‘My priority is, and always will be, the safety and security of the UK.
‘I am pleased with the decision from the court today, who have agreed with the Government’s position on every appeal ground.’
‘I welcome today’s court ruling, which has again upheld my decision to remove an individual’s citizenship on national security grounds,’ he said.
‘This is a complex case but home secretaries should have the power to prevent anyone entering our country who is assessed to pose a threat to it.’
But the decision drew the ire of Ms Begum’s legal team, with her lawyer Gareth Peirce calling it ‘an extraordinary judgment delivered in an extraordinary way’.
Speaking outside Field House in central London, she added that the commission ‘is clearly deeply troubled by the case it is having to decide and by the limitations placed on it by the Supreme Court’.
She continued: ‘The implication, the outcome, that we face is that no British child who has been trafficked outside the UK will be protected by the British state if the home secretary invokes national security.’
Daniel Furner, also part of Ms Begum’s legal team, said the case was ‘nowhere near over’ and they would be challenging the ruling.
He said: ‘In terms of the legal fight, that’s nowhere near over, we’re not going into details about exactly what that means at this stage.
‘What else this judgment calls out for though is some courage and some leadership from the Home Secretary to look at this case afresh in light of the clear and compelling factual findings this court has made. We are going to challenge this decision.’
But Sajid Javid, who was home secretary when Shamima Begum was first stripped of her British citizenship, lauded the decision.
He said today: ‘I welcome today’s court ruling, which has again upheld my decision to remove an individual’s citizenship on national security grounds.
‘This is a complex case but home secretaries should have the power to prevent anyone entering our country who is assessed to pose a threat to it.’
At a five-day hearing last year, Ms Begum’s barristers Samantha Knights KC and Dan Squires KC said she was ‘recruited, transported, transferred, harboured and received in Syria for the purposes of “sexual exploitation” and “marriage” to an adult male’.
They also argued that the Home Office unlawfully failed to consider that she travelled to Syria and remained there ‘as a victim of child trafficking’.
However, Sir James Eadie KC, for the department, said the security services ‘continue to assess that Ms Begum poses a risk to national security’.
Sir James later said that Mr Javid took into account Ms Begum’s age, how she travelled to Syria – including likely online radicalisation – and her activity in the country, when deciding to remove her British citizenship.
Giving the decision of the tribunal, Mr Justice Jay said that ‘reasonable people will differ’ over the circumstances of Ms Begum’s case.
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 Special Immigration Appeals Commission concluded there was a ‘credible suspicion’ that Ms Begum was trafficked to Syria for ‘sexual exploitation’ and that there were ‘arguable breaches of duty’ by state bodies in allowing her to travel to the country.
But Mr Justice Jay said in a summary of the commission’s decision that the existence of this suspicion was ‘insufficient’ for her to succeed on her arguments that the deprivation of her British citizenship failed to respect her human rights.
He added that given Ms Begum was now in Syria, the Home Secretary was not compelled to facilitate her return nor stopped from using ‘deprivation powers’.
The judge said: ‘The commission concluded that there was a credible suspicion that Ms Begum had been trafficked to Syria within the meaning of relevant international legal instruments.
Ms Begum’s British citizenship was revoked on national security grounds by the former home secretary Sajid Javid shortly after she was found, nine months pregnant, in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019
Ms Begum’s Dutch jihadi husband Yago Riedijk who fought for ISIS in Syria
‘Essentially, and from the perspective of those responsible for the trafficking, the motive for bringing her to Syria was sexual exploitation to which, as a child, she could not give a valid consent.
‘The commission also concluded that there were arguable breaches of duty on the part of various state bodies in permitting Ms Begum to leave the country as she did and eventually cross the border from Turkey into Syria.’
He added: ‘In outline, given that Ms Begum is now in Syria, the state’s corollary investigative duty did not compel the Secretary of State to facilitate her return to the United Kingdom, nor did it prevent him from exercising his deprivation powers.’
The judge said: ‘In short, the commission decided that a finding that Ms Begum has been trafficked does not operate as a form of limitation on the Secretary of State’s wide powers.’
They said today that the ruling has left ‘no protection for a British child trafficked out of the UK’.
In a statement, Ms Pierce and Mr Furner, from Birnberg Peirce Solicitors, said: ‘We, the lawyers entrusted with the representation of Ms Begum in circumstances of extreme difficulty, register our profound disagreement with the decision taken by the home secretary in 2019 and the diminution by the Supreme Court of the ability of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission to consider her legal challenges.
‘The outcome is that there is now no protection for a British child trafficked out of the UK if the home secretary invokes national security.
‘Regrettably, this is a lost opportunity to put into reverse a profound mistake and a continuing injustice.
‘Ms Begum remains in unlawful, arbitrary and indefinite detention without trial in a Syrian camp. Every possible avenue to challenge this decision will be urgently pursued.
‘In our view, that demands the Secretary of State must carefully review the original decision in light of the commission’s troubling findings.’
Amnesty International called this morning’s decision ‘disappointing’.
Steve Valdez-Symonds, the charity’s UK refugee and migrant rights director, said: ‘The Home Secretary shouldn’t be in the business of exiling British citizens by stripping them of their citizenship.
‘The power to banish a citizen like this simply shouldn’t exist in the modern world, not least when we’re talking about a person who was seriously exploited as a child.
‘Shamima Begum had lived all her life in the UK right up to the point she was lured to Syria as an impressionable 15-year-old.
‘ISIS have been responsible for appalling crimes in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, but that doesn’t change that Shamima Begum is British and was groomed and trafficked to Syria.’
The Home Office have said they are ‘pleased’ by the judgment.
In a statement, a spokeswoman said: ‘We are pleased that the court has found in favour of the Government’s position in this case.
‘The Government’s priority remains maintaining the safety and security of the UK and we will robustly defend any decision made in doing so.’
Devyani Prabhat, a professor at the University of Bristol Law School, said the ruling in Ms Begum’s case is ‘far from the end of the legal issues, as this will be followed by appeals and other proceedings by her team’.
She added: ‘It only highlights the complexity of the issues and is one step in a long journey in Begum’s cancellation of citizenship proceedings.’
The ‘wide discretion’ given to home secretaries to deprive someone of their British citizenship on national security grounds makes it ‘quite difficult to challenge this, especially when there is evidence which is secret or not publicly available’, she said.
Before the judgment was delivered, Labour’s shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry argued she should have been returned to the UK to face justice.
She told Sky News: ‘On the face of it she’s clearly committed offences so she should be returned to the UK to face justice.
‘While it seems she can claim Bangladeshi citizenship she is currently stateless in a refugee settlement.’
However, defence minister Johnny Mercer said he was confident judges will come to the ‘right conclusion’ over the appeal against the revocation of citizenship.
In a round of interviews this morning, Mr Mercer said the question of whether Ms Begum should be allowed to return to the UK was ‘a decision for the Home Secretary and previous home secretaries’.
He added: ‘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.’
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.
A CCTV grab showing Begum fleeing the UK through Gatwick Airport in 2015
Begum with her friends Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana at Istanbul bus station
However, her barristers said in November that the decision made Ms Begum ‘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.
Earlier this month, Ms Begum’s mother-in-law called for the runaway ISIS bride to be allowed back into the UK so she can rebuild her life.
Speaking for the first time, Ankie Riedijk, the mother of Begum’s jihadist husband Yago, insisted that while they should both face justice for travelling to Syria to join ISIS their governments must take responsibility for them becoming radicalised.
Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, she said: ‘I am convinced that Shamima should be allowed to go home and build her life there.’
In the first interview she has given since, like Begum, her Muslim convert son absconded to Syria – Mrs Riedijk set out what she thinks should happen to the daughter-in-law she has never met.
Standing on the doorstep of her smart, £180,000 end-of-terrace home in Arnhem, a quiet town in the Netherlands, Mrs Riedijk said that she and her husband Lex, a railway engineer, had always hitherto been reluctant to be drawn into the furore regarding Begum’s future.
However Mrs Riedijk believes Shamima, and her son Yago, should be brought back to their home countries.
Ms Begum in the grim surroundings of the Al-Hawl refugee camp in Syria last year