Shamima Begum was 'child trafficking victim', say lawyers

has launched a fresh appeal over the loss of her UK citizenship by claiming she was trafficked into Syria as a child to have sex with older men. 

Her lawyers have argued that Miss Begum was influenced by a ‘determined and effective propaganda machine’, and should have been treated as a child trafficking victim. 

Dan Squires KC said: ‘We can use euphemisms such as jihadi bride or marriage but the purpose of bringing these girls across was so that they could have sex with adult men’. 

But this argument was rejected by an witness, who said it was ‘inconceivable’ Miss Begum did not know she was joining a terrorist group when, aged 15, she left her home in Bethnal Green, east , with fellow pupils Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana in 2015.

Now 23,

Miss Begum’s latest attempt to overthrow the decision to revoke her UK citizenship began yesterday – the second of a five-day hearing at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC).

In Syria, she married – and had three children, all of whom died as infants.

Mr Squires said trafficking is legally defined as the ‘recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons for the purposes of exploitation’, including ‘sexual exploitation’.

‘The evidence is overwhelming that she was recruited, Lawyer Law Firm Turkey istanbul transported, transferred, harboured and received in Syria by ISIS for the purpose of sexual exploitation and marriage to an adult male – and she was, indeed, married to an adult, significantly older than herself, within days of her arrival in Syria, falling pregnant soon after.

‘In doing so, she was following a well-known pattern by which ISIS cynically recruited and groomed female children, as young as 14, so that they could be offered as wives to adult men.’

But a witness from MI5, referred to as Witness E, said they would use ‘the word radicalise instead [of grooming]’.

When asked whether the Security Service considered trafficking in their national security threat assessment of Miss Begum, Witness E told the tribunal: ‘MI5 are experts in national security and not experts in other things such as trafficking – those are best left to people with qualifications in those areas.

‘Our function was to provide the national security threat to the Home Office and that is what we did.

‘We assess whether someone is a threat and it is important to note that victims very much can be threats if someone is indeed a victim of trafficking.’

He added: ‘In our opinion it is inconceivable that someone would not know what Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was doing as a terrorist organisation at the time.’

He cited the , the genocide of the Yazidis in Sinjar and the executions of hostages as well as an ISIS attack on a Jewish supermarket near Paris.

‘In my mind and that of colleagues, it is inconceivable that a 15 year old, an A-star pupil, intelligent, articulate and presumably critical-thinking individual, would not know what ISIL was about.

‘In some respect I do believe she would have known what she was doing and Turkish Law Firm Turkish Firm had agency in doing so.’

Philip Larkin, a witness for the Home Office, told the hearing that there had been ‘no formal conclusion’ on whether Miss Begum was a victim of human trafficking.

‘The Home Secretary wasn’t and isn’t in a position to take a formal view,’ he said.

Samantha Knights KC, representing Miss Begum, argued that she was a ‘British child aged 15 who was persuaded by a determined and effective ISIS propaganda machine to follow a pre-existing route and provide a marriage for an ISIS fighter’.

Miss Begum’s transfer into Syria, across the Turkish border, was assisted by a Canadian double agent, the lawyer added.

She called the case ‘extraordinary’ and said Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary who deprived her of her citizenship, had taken ‘over-hasty steps’ less than a week after Miss Begum gave her first interview to the media from detention in Syria.

and her UK citizenship was revoked on national security grounds shortly afterwards.

The 23-year-old has denied any involvement in terror activities and is challenging a government decision to revoke her citizenship.

Among the factors considered in the hearing were comments made by her family to a lawyer, the fact she was present until the fall of the so-called Caliphate, and her own media interviews. 

Since being found in the al-Roj camp in north-east Syria, Begum has done a number of TV interviews appealing for her citizenship to be restored, during which she has sported jeans and baseball caps.

Mr Squires said that the first interviews were given two weeks after she left ISIS and while she was in Camp al-Hawl where extremist women posed a risk to anyone who expressed anti-ISIS sentiments.

Mr Squires described ISIS as a ‘particularly brutal cult’ in terms of ‘how it controls people, lures children away from parents, brainwashes people’.

Witness E said it was ‘not a description we would use for a terrorist organisation’.

The lawyer said there was a particularly brutal oppression of women, involving lashings amputations and executions

‘They sought to attract recruits from western countries and had a sophisticated and successful system for doing so,’ Mr Squires added.

‘Part of that is exploiting the vulnerability of children and young people and grooming them to join the movement.’

But the officer said that ‘to some degree age is almost irrelevant to ISIL in terms of wishing to get people to travel to the Caliphate.Their propaganda was there for everyone to see and was not solely limited to minors.’

However, Mr Squires insisted that one of the things ISIS do is ‘cynically groom the vulnerable and young to join their movement’, adding: ‘It is also true that one of the things they did was to groom children in order to offer them as wives to adult men.’

Approximately 60 women and girls had travelled to ISIS-controlled territory, as part of a ‘campaign by ISIS to target vulnerable teenagers to become brides for jihadist fighters’, including 15 girls who were aged 20 years or younger, according to figures from the Metropolitan Police.

Among them was Miss Begum’s friend, Sharmeena Begum, who had travelled to ISIS-controlled territory in Syria as a child aged 15 on December 5 2014.

Of the pair who travelled with Miss Begum, Ms Sultana was reportedly killed in a Russian air raid while Ms Abase is missing.It has since been claimed that they were smuggled into Syria by a Canadian spy.

A Special Immigration Appeals Commission hearing started yesterday at Field House tribunal centre, London, and is expected to last five days.

After Miss Begum’s UK citizenship was revoked, she challenged the Home Office’s decision – but the Supreme Court ruled that she was not allowed to enter the UK to pursue her appeal.

Miss Begum continues to be held at the al-Roj camp and has lost three children since travelling to the war zone.

Last summer, during an interview, Miss Begum said she wanted to be brought back to the UK to face charges and added in a direct appeal to the Prime Minister that she could be ‘an asset’ in the fight against terror.

She added that she had been ‘groomed’ to flee to Syria as a ‘dumb’ and impressionable child.

Previously she has spoken about seeing ‘beheaded heads’ in bins but said that this ‘did not faze her’.

This prompted Sir James Eadie KC to brand her a ‘real and current threat to national security’ during a previous legal appeal at the Supreme Court in 2020.

He argued that her ‘radicalisation and desensitisation’ were proved by the comments made, showing her as a continued danger to the public.

However, since that interview in February 2019, Begum has said that she is ‘sorry’ to the UK public for joining ISIS and said she would ‘rather die’ than go back to them.

Speaking on Good Morning Britain, she said: ‘There is no justification for killing people in the name of God.I apologise. I’m sorry.’

She has also opted for baseball caps and jeans instead of the hijab. 

has reported that she will tell the court she is no longer a national security threat as her appeal gets underway, with her lawyers set to argue that she was a victim of child trafficking when she travelled to Syria.  

It comes amid claims that the three schoolgirls were smuggled into Syria by a Canadian spy. 

According to the BBC and The Times, Mohammed Al Rasheed, who is alleged to have been a double agent working for the Canadians, met the girls in Turkey before taking them to Syria in February 2015.

Both news organisations reported that Rasheed was providing information to Canadian intelligence while smuggling people to ISIS, with The Times quoting the book The Secret History Of The Five Eyes.

Moss Begum’s family lawyer Tasnime Akunjee previously said in a statement: ‘Shamima Begum will have a hearing in the Special Immigration Appeals Commission court, where one of the main arguments will be that when former home secretary Sajid Javid stripped Shamima Begum of her citizenship leaving her in Syria, he did not consider that she was a victim of trafficking.

‘The UK has international obligations as to how we view a trafficked person and what culpability we prescribed to them for their actions.’

Ahead of the beginning of her appeal on Monday morning, immigration minister Robert Jenrick said it was ‘difficult’ for him to comment on her case at this stage.

However, he said people should always have an ‘open mind’ about how to respond when teenagers make mistakes.

He told Sky News: ‘It’s difficult for me to comment, I’m afraid…because we’re waiting for the court’s judgment.

‘Once we hear that, then I’m happy to come on your programme and speak to you.

‘I do think as a fundamental principle there will be cases, rare cases…where people do things and make choices which undermine the UK interest to such an extent that it is right for the Home Secretary to have the power to remove their passport.’

Asked if there is ever room to reconsider where teenagers make mistakes, he said: ‘Well, I think you should always have an open mind, but it depends on the scale of the mistake and the harm that that individual did or could have done to UK interests abroad.

‘I don’t want to comment too much on this case, if that’s OK, because we’ll find out later what the court’s decision was.’