Crime and punishment

In 2015, an anonymous schoolgirl from east London boarded a plane to TurkeyOfficially the Republic of Turkiye, a country that lies partly in Europe and partly in Asia at the east of the Mediterranean. . Whoever checked her passport would not have looked twice at the name Shamima Begum.

It is hard to imagine the same thing happening on a return trip. Her face has been splashed on the front of every UK newspaper. The mere mention of her name can divide a room down the middle.

And now she is at the centre of a legal storm. In 2019, the UK government stripped her of her citizenship after she was found by journalists living in a refugee camp in SyriaA Middle Eastern country that was the site of much of the fighting during the Crusades.. It was four years after she had left Britain with two school friends to join a terrorist group, the Islamic StateA terrorist organisation that captured whole swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria in 2014, and launched a series of attacks in Europe and North America. It is also known as ISIS or ISIL. .

On Friday, she lost another appeal against this move in the UK's Court of Appeal.

Begum might have lost her challenge, but the British government has faced criticism too. After Begum lost another appeal last year, one of its own top advisers said that it makes the UK more vulnerable to terrorism.¹

The UK government argues that it is right to strip Begum of her citizenship because she has committed acts of terrorism, and if she is allowed back in the UK she might pose a threat to others.

It has the power to do this under a law passed in 2014 allowing the Home SecretaryIn Britain, they are responsible for national security, immigration and policing. to strip any British citizen of their citizenship if doing so is "conducive to the public good", and provided they are already, or are able to become, citizens of another country.

Begum was born in the UK, but her parents have Bangladeshi citizenship, so she is technically eligible for citizenship there - although she has never lived in the country.

But critics say this law is unfair and immoral. They think it creates a second tier of citizenship. Citizens with longer-standing British ancestry cannot have their citizenship revoked even if they commit the same crimes as Begum.

They say this sends the message that people born in Britain to foreign parents are not fully British. It also creates a kind of citizenship lottery that affects people differently according to their ancestry. 

Someone with a single Irish grandparent can lose their citizenship, because Ireland will allow them to apply for a passport. Since all Jewish people are eligible to apply for Israeli citizenship, all British Jews can theoretically have their British citizenship revoked.

Others believe it is wrong for wealthy countries like the UK to dodge their responsibilities for terrorists who grew up there by making poorer countries like Bangladesh take them in.²

And, they insist, this also weakens the global fight against terrorism. It is easier to keep terrorists under surveillance on UK soil. If they stay abroad, it is much more likely that they will slip under the radar.

That also means there is a greater chance they end up returning to the UK by illegal channels and evading detection once they are back. So the policy of keeping British terrorists out might lead to more terrorism in Britain and around the world.

And some think letting Begum come back is just the right thing to do. They say she was effectively groomedWhen someone forms a relationship with a vulnerable person, especially a child, with the intention of later exploiting them. by IS, which then married her off to an older man. She has watched her three children die. She should have a chance at redemption.

Yes: Begum joined a terrorist group. According to reports, she was an enthusiastic enforcer for IS. When she first resurfaced in 2019, she expressed no remorse for what she had done. She cannot be allowed back.

No: Begum was a child when she left. She has made mistakes but she deserves forgiveness. It is not just to subject her, without trial, to a punishment that another British citizen would not face.

Or... This is not really about Begum as an individual. The UK government has redefined citizenship as a privilege, rather than a right. This is an abuse of power that should worry people worldwide.