- May 19, 2011
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47229181
Aside from her still being pretty cool with IS and then wanting to come home because it happens to suit her at this particular moment and not for any ideological reason, I think the comment regarding her becoming a lightning rod for extremists is valid even if she wanted to live a quiet and civilised life here; amongst the far right she'd be a confirmation that we welcome foreign elements harmful to our society with open arms and give them a nice warm bed to sleep in. As it is, the facts of the matter are that she'd still be in Syria with the rest of IS if they were winning, she stayed in Syria even after her second kid died of malnutrition, and if she brings her third kid here it seems pretty likely that she'd want to raise him as her little jihadist, after all, why would anyone completely voluntarily join up with IS if they didn't fancy the sound of a jihad.
Had she been an older and wiser person who regretted her actions and has been fending for her life the moment she entered Syria and tried to leave as quickly as she could then I'd be sympathetic to her plight. As it is she seems to be the perfect example for far-right organisations to base their crusades on.
If there's some legal obligation for her to come home then a jail term and permanent loss of custody of her child plus no further contact seems like the price she should pay (partly based on the logic that she came back for her child's sake). That fixes the problem of the far-right as well as her spreading her values particularly to her child.
article said:One of three schoolgirls who left east London in 2015 to join the Islamic State group says she has no regrets, but wants to return to the UK.
In an interview with the Times, Shamima Begum, now 19, talked about seeing "beheaded heads" in bins - but said that it "did not faze her".
Speaking from a refugee camp in Syria, she said she was nine months pregnant and wanted to come home for her baby.
She said she'd had two other children who had both died.
She also described how one of her two school friends that had left the UK with her had died in a bombing. The fate of the third girl is unclear.
"I applied to marry an English-speaking fighter between 20 and 25 years old," she said.
Ten days later she married a 27-year-old Dutch man who had converted to Islam.
She has been with him since then, and the couple escaped from Baghuz - the group's last territory in eastern Syria - two weeks ago.
Her husband surrendered to a group of Syrian fighters as they left, and she is now one of 39,000 people in a refugee camp in northern Syria.
Asked by Times journalist Anthony Loyd whether her experiences of living in the one-time IS stronghold of Raqqa had lived up to her aspirations, Ms Begum said: "Yes, it did. It was like a normal life. The life that they show on the propaganda videos - it's a normal life.
"Every now and then there are bombs and stuff. But other than that..."
She said that seeing her first "severed head" in a bin "didn't faze me at all".
"It was from a captured fighter seized on the battlefield, an enemy of Islam.
"I thought only of what he would have done to a Muslim woman if he had the chance," she said.
"I'm not the same silly little 15-year-old schoolgirl who ran away from Bethnal Green four years ago," she told Mr Loyd.
"I don't regret coming here."
But Ms Begum said the "oppression" had come as a "shock" and said she felt the IS "caliphate" was at an end.
"I don't have high hopes. They are just getting smaller and smaller," she said. "And there is so much oppression and corruption going on that I don't really think they deserve victory."
She referred to her husband having been held in a prison where men were tortured.
A lawyer for the family of Kadiza Sultana said in 2016 that she was believed to have been killed in a Russian air strike.
Ms Begum told the Times her friend had died in a bombing on a house where there was "some secret stuff going on" underground.
She added: "I never thought it would happen. At first I was in denial. Because I always thought if we got killed, we'd get killed together."
'Scared this baby is going to get sick'
Ms Begum said losing two children "came as a shock. It just came out of nowhere, it was so hard".
Her first child, a girl, died at the age of one year and nine months, and was buried in Baghuz a month ago.
Her second child - the first to die - died three months ago at the age of eight months, of an illness that was compounded by malnutrition, the Times reports.
She told the paper she took him to a hospital. "There were no drugs available, and not enough medical staff," she said.
As a result she said she was "really overprotective" of her unborn child.
She said this concern also contributed to her decision to leave Baghuz.
"I was weak," she said. "I could not endure the suffering and hardship that staying on the battlefield involved.
"But I was also frightened that the child I am about to give birth to would die like my other children if I stayed on."
She said she remained scared her unborn baby would become ill in the refugee camp.
"That's why I really want to get back to Britain because I know it will be taken care of - health-wise, at least," she said.
She said she should be giving birth "any day now".
"I'll do anything required just to be able to come home and live quietly with my child."
Security minister Ben Wallace said he could not comment on Ms Begum's case for legal reasons but said any Britons who had gone to Syria to engage or support terrorist activities should be prepared to be questioned, investigated and potentially prosecuted if they came back to the UK.
He said there was no consular assistance in Syria so any Briton wanting consular help would need to find consular services elsewhere in the region.
Asked whether the government would be rushing to bring home people such as Ms Begum, he said: "I'm not putting at risk British people's lives to go and look for terrorists or former terrorists in a failed state."
He added that while the UK had a duty of care to children of Britons in Syria, he also had a duty towards all UK citizens and would do what was "proportionate and necessary" to keep people safe.
Sir Peter Fahy, a retired senior police chief who led the Prevent terrorism prevention programme at the time the girls ran away, said if Ms Begum did return to the UK, the authorities would first detain her and investigate whether there was enough evidence to mount a prosecution.
He said he could understand why the government was "not particularly interested" in facilitating her return.
"If the woman was showing complete remorse, it would be completely different," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
He said it would cost a "vast amount of money" and the biggest challenge would be for local police to keep her safe.
They would have to ensure she did not become a lightning rod for both right-wing extremists and Islamic extremists and did not try justify her position and actions, he added.
IS has lost control of most of the territory it overran, including its strongholds of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.
However, fighting continues in north-eastern Syria, where the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) say they captured dozens of foreign fighters in recent weeks.
Aside from her still being pretty cool with IS and then wanting to come home because it happens to suit her at this particular moment and not for any ideological reason, I think the comment regarding her becoming a lightning rod for extremists is valid even if she wanted to live a quiet and civilised life here; amongst the far right she'd be a confirmation that we welcome foreign elements harmful to our society with open arms and give them a nice warm bed to sleep in. As it is, the facts of the matter are that she'd still be in Syria with the rest of IS if they were winning, she stayed in Syria even after her second kid died of malnutrition, and if she brings her third kid here it seems pretty likely that she'd want to raise him as her little jihadist, after all, why would anyone completely voluntarily join up with IS if they didn't fancy the sound of a jihad.
Had she been an older and wiser person who regretted her actions and has been fending for her life the moment she entered Syria and tried to leave as quickly as she could then I'd be sympathetic to her plight. As it is she seems to be the perfect example for far-right organisations to base their crusades on.
If there's some legal obligation for her to come home then a jail term and permanent loss of custody of her child plus no further contact seems like the price she should pay (partly based on the logic that she came back for her child's sake). That fixes the problem of the far-right as well as her spreading her values particularly to her child.
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