Court rules ‘Daesh bride’ Shamima Begum allowed to return to the UK

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

Shamima Begum, a UK woman who joined Daesh in 2015 as a teenager, has today won her appeal to be allowed to return to the UK.

Dubbed a “Daesh bride” for having left the UK to marry a member of the terror group, British-born Shamima was 15 years old at the time of her departure. She was stripped of her British citizenship on national security grounds four years later.

She claimed the decision to strip her of citizenship was unlawful and took legal action against the Home Office, arguing she had been left stateless.

Now 20, Shamima today won a court ruling allowing her to return to the UK to contest the government’s decision to revoke her nationality.

During her time in a Syrian refugee camp, while unable to return to the UK, Shamima’s newborn son died, he was the third of her children to die since she arrived in the war-torn country in 2015.

READ: Isn’t it time to revoke Asma Al-Assad’s British citizenship?

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.