The UK’s counter-terrorism commander has said that Shamima Begum should be treated as a security threat and arrested if the former teen ISIS bride wins her case to return to the UK.
The 21-year-old from London had left for Syria aged 15 to marry an Islamic State fighter. She was discovered last year in a Kurdish-run detention camp for family members of jihadists, and, despite showing no remorse for joining the terror group, asked to be repatriated to the UK.
Then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid revoked her British citizenship, and last month the Supreme Court heard her application to have the right to return to Britain to challenge her disenfranchisement in person. The senior judges are expected to give their ruling in the new year.
Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu told the Evening Standard on Tuesday that if Begum is permitted to return, she should be treated as a threat to national security, arrested, and her alliance to the terror group assessed.
“She’s the big exemplar of the problem we have of the assessment of threat and risk” of returnees from Islamist warzones like Syria, the counter-terrorism commander said, adding: “She’s also someone who would expect to be arrested and investigated for her activity and nobody who has travelled there who has said the things publicly that she’s said should be under any illusion.” Breitbart.
