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Daesh husband of British teenager wants to take her to Netherlands

March 3, 2019 at 1:05 pm

A photograph of Shamima Begum in London, UK on 22 February 2015 [Laura Lean/WPA Pool/Getty Images]

The Dutch husband of a British teenager who was stripped of her citizenship after joining the Daesh group wants to return to the Netherlands with her and their child, the BBC reported on Sunday.

Shamima Begum, 19, left London with two school friends to join Daesh when she was 15 but now wants to return to the UK with her newborn son. Her British citizenship was revoked last month on security grounds.

The fate of Begum, who was found in a detention camp in Syria last month, has illustrated the ethical, legal and security conundrum that governments face when dealing with the families of militants who swore to destroy the West.

Read: The cases of Shamima Begum and Rahaf Mohammed tell us a lot about how we define victimhood

Citing an interview with her husband Yago Riedijk, the BBC reported he had fought for Daesh but had surrendered to a group of Syrian fighters and was being held in a Kurdish detention centre in north-eastern Syria.

The BBC said Riedijk now wants to return to the Netherlands with his wife and son.

“She seemed in a good state of mind,” he said of when he first met her. “It was her own choice. She asked to look for a partner for her, and I was invited. She was very young … she chose to get married and I chose to marry her.”