Shamima Begum, who left Britain as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State (IS) in Syria, was likely to have been the victim of child trafficking and sexual exploitation, a court has heard.
Lawyers acting for the 23-year-old began a new appeal on Monday against the removal of her British citizenship at a hearing of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac).
They said she was lured to Syria in 2015 when she left east London as a 15-year-old GCSE student, along with two school friends.
Once in Syria she married an IS fighter and gave birth to three children, all of whom died as infants. When Begum was discovered in a Syrian camp in 2019, the then home secretary, Sajid Javid, prevented her returning to the UK by revoking her UK citizenship.
Samantha Knights KC, representing Begum, said on Monday that this “over-hasty” decision made Begum “effectively an exile for life”.
She told the hearing: “This case concerns a British child aged 15 who was persuaded, influenced and affected with her friends by a determined and effective [IS] propaganda machine.”
Begum’s lawyers said in written arguments that the Home Office had revoked her citizenship “without seeking to investigate and determine, still less consider, whether she was a child victim of trafficking”.
They also argued there was overwhelming evidence that Begum was “recruited, transported, transferred, harboured and received in Syria for the purposes of sexual exploitation”.
Begum is also challenging the removal of her citizenship on the grounds that it made her “de facto stateless” and that the decision was predetermined.
Lawyers representing the Home Office said Begum’s case was about national security rather than trafficking.
An unnamed British intelligence officer who gave evidence from behind a screen said it was “inconceivable” that someone traveling to Syria to join IS in 2015 “would not know what [IS] was doing as a terrorist organisation”.
“In some respects she would have known what she was doing and had agency in doing so.”
The officer added: “I think it’s worth noting how MI5 are experts in national security threats and not the definition of trafficking. We consider whether someone is a threat and it is important to note we recognise that victims can be threats if someone is a victim of trafficking.”
The witness noted Begum was predicted high grades in her exams, suggesting she was presumably intelligent and capable of critical thinking.
James Eadie KC, representing the government, said in written arguments that Begum had aligned with IS and stayed in Syria for four years until 2019.
Eadie said Begum left IS territory “only as the caliphate collapsed”, adding: “Even at that stage, the evidence demonstrates that she left only for safety and not because of a genuine disengagement from the group.”
He added: “When she did emerge, and gave multiple press interviews shortly before the secretary of state decided to deprive her of her citizenship, she expressed no remorse and said she did not regret joining [IS], acknowledging that she was aware of the nature of the group when she travelled.”
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Last February the supreme court backed Javid’s decision to revoke Begum’s citizenship.
The hearing at Field House tribunal centre, which is expected to last five days, continues.
Speaking before the hearing, the UK immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, told Sky News it was a “fundamental principle” that “where people do things 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.”
According to the human rights group Reprieve, there are up to 25 British families, including 36 children, still in camps in Kurdish-controlled north-east Syria, where suspected relatives of IS fighters have been held.
A book published earlier this year by the journalist Richard Kerbaj alleged that Begum and her friends were taken into Syria by a Syrian man who was leaking information to the Canadian security services.
Mohammed al-Rashed is alleged to have been in charge of the Turkish side of an extensive IS people-smuggling network.
In a statement, Maya Foa, Reprieve’s director, said: “Most British women in north-east Syria were groomed, coerced or deceived by [IS], which operated as a sophisticated trafficking gang. British women, many of whom were young girls at the time, were held against their will and subjected to sexual and other forms of exploitation.
“The UK government has been found to have unlawfully stripped British nationals of their citizenship, to have rendered British children stateless, and to have created a situation where families risk being torn apart because they no longer have the right to remain in the same country as each other.
“Shamima Begum was groomed online as a child and taken to Syria by a Canadian intelligence spy. She should be protected as a trafficked British teenage girl would be in any other context.”
