The now 20-year-old Isis bride will not be allowed to return to the UK (Picture: Daily Mail/PA)

Isis bride Shamima Begum has lost the first stage of a legal challenge against the decision to revoke her British citizenship.

Ms Begum, now 20, was one of three east London schoolgirls who travelled to Syria to join so-called Islamic State in February 2015.

The mother has lived under IS rule for more than three years and was found nine months pregnant in a Syrian refugee camp in February, last year.

Later that month former home secretary Sajid Javid stripped her of her British citizenship – a decision Ms Begum’s lawyers had argued was unlawful because it rendered her stateless.


Shamima Begum fled to Syria in 2015 to join so-called Islamic State (Picture: BBC)

The now 20-year-old said her three children had died in the camps (Picture: PA)

Such a decision is lawful only if an individual is entitled to citizenship of another country and Ms Begum was a British national.



Ms Begum had pleaded to be allowed back into the UK for the safety of her unborn child, after two of her children – a one-year-old girl and a three-month-old boy – had already died in the camp.

Speaking from the al-Hawl refugee camp in northern Syria, Begum told The Times: ‘I’m not the same silly little 15-year-old schoolgirl who ran away from Bethnal Green four years ago. And I don’t regret coming here.’

After Mr Javid’s decision, Ms Begum last year took legal action against the Home Office at the High Court and the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) – a specialist tribunal which hears challenges to decisions to remove someone’s British citizenship on national security grounds.

The tribunal, led by SIAC president Mrs Justice Elisabeth Laing, ruled on Friday that the decision to revoke Ms Begum’s British citizenship did not render her stateless.

Judge Doron Blum, announcing the decision of the tribunal, said that the move did not breach the Home Office’s ‘extraterritorial human rights policy by exposing Ms Begum to a real risk of death or inhuman or degrading treatment’.

British Jihadi wife Shamima Begum with son Jerah, who died, in Al Hawl camp for captured ISIS wives in children, Kurdish Syria (Picture: Daily Mail)

CCTV footage shows (L-R) British teenagers Amira Abase, Kadiza Sultana and Shamima Begum at Gatwick Airport when they fled to Syria (Picture: AFP)

He added that, while Ms Begum ‘cannot have an effective appeal in her current circumstances’, it ‘does not follow that her appeal succeeds’ on that ground.

Ms Begum, then aged 15, was one of three schoolgirls from Bethnal Green Academy who left their homes and families to join IS, shortly after Sharmeena Begum – who is no relation – travelled to Syria in December 2014.

Kadiza Sultana, then 16, and Amira Abase, then 15, and Ms Begum boarded a flight from Gatwick Airport to Istanbul, Turkey, on February 17 2015, before making their way to Raqqa in Syria.

Sultana was reportedly killed in an air strike in 2016, while Abase and Sharmeena Begum’s current whereabouts are unknown.

Ms Begum wanted to return to the UK to give birth to her third child (Picture: ITV News)

But her return was considered a matter of national security (Picture: ITV News)

Ms Begum claims she married Dutch convert Yago Riedijk 10 days after arriving in IS territory, with all three of her schoolfriends also reportedly marrying foreign IS fighters.

She later told The Times last February that she left Raqqa in January 2017 with her husband and her children who later died. Her third child died shortly after he was born.

Ms Begum said: ‘They are making an example of me. I regret speaking to the media. I wish I had stayed low and found a different way to contact my family. That’s why I spoke to the newspaper.’



She then moved to the al-Roj camp in north-eastern Syria, reportedly because of threats to her life made at al-Hawl following the publication of her newspaper interviews.

It had been questioned whether Ms Begum could be considered a Bangladeshi citizen, which was quickly rejected by foreign minister Abdul Momen, who said Begum could face the death penalty for involvement in terrorism if she goes to the country.

After lawyers challenged the decision to revoke her citizenship, Home Secretary Priti Patel told The Sun there was ‘no way’ she would let Ms Begum back into the UK, adding: ‘We cannot have people who would do us harm allowed to enter our country – and that includes this woman.’

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