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ISIS teenager wants to come home

Archie Gemmill Goal said:
She should be allowed to return and tried in a court. I'm not sure the kid should be allowed to stay with her regardless.
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This. She should be allowed to return,but face the consequences for her actions.
I admit my sypmathy for somebody who joins a group as viscous as ISIS is very limited.
 
Converts just can't maintain fever-pitch zeal when their world is not evidently coming to an end. Young Kurd women fought on, but privileged teenage Westerners break after a few years.

Who woulda predicted.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I can't help but feel that "You're not welcome back in a country (as a normal, private citizen) after you've declared yourself to an enemy of that country" is just one of those things that in any sane world we would haven't to spell out.

But there's nothing in the rule book that says a golden retriever can't play football yet again I guess.
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Either she was involved in acts of war for a hostile power, aka treason, or she was abetting a criminal organization. It's a bit tricky when you're dealing with a pseudo-state like ISIS and no formal declarations of war.

I don't see any way to slice this that doesn't end with her in a British jail if she comes back, unless they cut her some serious slack for being underage at the time.
 
dudalb said:
This. She should be allowed to return,but face the consequences for her actions.
I admit my sypmathy for somebody who joins a group as viscous as ISIS is very limited.
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Yes, those high viscosity groups are dreadful, oil of them.
 
Another British jihadi bride, Tareena Shakil, who got out of the war zone with her child, lied to the security services on her return and was jailed for membership of a terrorist group.

If Ms Begum got out of the country, that is the kind of charge she could face - along with encouraging or supporting terrorism.
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Shades of Lord Haw Haw and his lying to get a British Passport,,,,,
 
JoeMorgue said:
I can't help but feel that "You're not welcome back in a country (as a normal, private citizen) after you've declared yourself to an enemy of that country" is just one of those things that in any sane world we would haven't to spell out.
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I think it's okay to handle these things on a case-by-case basis. In some cases, such as conventional warfare, you can simply detain people as prisoners of war, and repatriate them once the war is over and terms of surrender have been agreed. No harm, no foul, so to speak.

In other cases, such as unconventional warfare against non-state actors who are likely to persist in some form indefinitely, and for whom there will never be any decisive surrender, the POW model breaks down. See the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

On the other hand, you're only dealing with a relatively small population of enemy combatants. It's much easier to address such prisoners individually, rather than as a class.

I think there's a very strong humanitarian case to be made for bringing this child home and giving her a chance to recover and do something else with her life. I think there's also a very strong criminal and civil justice case to be made for putting her on trial and holding her accountable for going to war against her own country. And I think that both these cases can be made together, in concert.

But to be clear: I'm not proposing a one-size-fits-all solution. I'm not saying this should be a general rule applied to everyone.

I think it's in society's best interests to handle these case-by-case, and reserve the privilege of doing something different in each case.

But there's nothing in the rule book that says a golden retriever can't play football yet again I guess.
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Well put.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
If that kid survives, it's almost certain to become a terrorist to some degree.
Enlightened self-interest suggests that the world is safer when more people get some education instead of growing up in terrorist-controlled refugee camps.
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The difference is between the 90% (say) chance of a terrorist over there and a 10% (say) chance of a terrorist over here. If the government has a choice I'd urge them to go with the former.
 
Just on whether she's broken any laws – apart from joining an illegal terrorist organisation and specifically going to Syria to help IS wage a lethal war, in the Times newspaper interview she says of the fighting that's been raging in the last few weeks in Baghuz “I was weak, I could not endure the suffering and hardship that staying on the battlefield involved” .

She appears there to be confirming that although heavily pregnant, she was actually “staying on the battlefield” (of course we might think the “battlefield” involved the entire town, such that she could not avoid “staying on the battlefield” … however, she also says that in the final few days the women were all offered the option of leaving the battlefield, and that after some time (days or weeks), she decided to walk away from that battlefield).

When asked what her reaction was to seeing her first severed head (in a bin), she not only said “it did not phaze me”, but added that “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”.

There she appears to be repeating the same propaganda statement that has appeared from almost every UK Islamic fundamentalist on trial in the UK (that's now several hundred of them) where almost all of them said in trial evidence or said in martyrdom videos or where they were recorded in phone transcripts etc., that one reason they were trying to kill the “kuffa” (i.e. non-believers, opponents of hard-line Islam) was because their western opponents were “killing and raping our women and children”.

Regarding her marriage to an Islamic fighter – she was aged 15 when she left the UK, and she says in the article that as soon as she got to Raqqa (Syria) “I applied to marry an English speaking fighter between the ages of 20 and 25 yeas old” and within 10 days she was married. She then had two children who both died, and now she has been pregnant with a third child of the IS fighter for nearly 9 months.

That sounds to me almost like these girls are deliberately going to the front-line battle area to instantly marry a jihadist fighter within days, and producing as many children as possible to be raised in that Jihadist battle environment.

None of that sounds to me anything at all like a person who has much if any concern that she has done anything wrong or that she needs to change her mind about supporting IS in it's campaign of worldwide mass murder.

However, despite all of that - if she is nevertheless allowed back into the UK, then afaik she is likely to be tried for terrorist offences and quite probably jailed for some years. And (according to "experts" discussing this on BBC radio this morning) her child would probably taken into state care and placed with more suitable parents who are not trying to raise Islamist fundamentalist fighters.
 
Yeah regardless of everything else this young woman (calling her a 'girl' infantalizes her too much imo) isn't acting like she's sorry she joined ISIS, just that it's too much for her to handle.

It's like she wants to go back to the UK because she doesn't like ISIS's maternal leave policy.
 
Venom said:
Converts just can't maintain fever-pitch zeal when their world is not evidently coming to an end. Young Kurd women fought on, but privileged teenage Westerners break after a few years.

Who woulda predicted.
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It's the green soldiers, who have never been under fire, that you have to worry about breaking in combat.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Yeah regardless of everything else this young woman (calling her a 'girl' infantalizes her too much imo) isn't acting like she's sorry she joined ISIS, just that it's too much for her to handle.

It's like she wants to go back to the UK because she doesn't like ISIS's maternal leave policy.
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I think the term is she is not sorry she did it, but very sorry she has to face the consequences of her actions.
Sort of a variation of "He's not sorry he commited the crime, but very sorry he got caught".
 
dudalb said:
This. She should be allowed to return,but face the consequences for her actions.
I admit my sypmathy for somebody who joins a group as viscous as ISIS is very limited.
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One of the problems we are having (at least in Canada) is actually making a legal case against them... We can claim they are guilty of treason, or "aiding a terrorist organization" (or whatever the charge is), but how do you make the case? Its doubtful ISIS was keeping accurate census records, and trying to interview eye-witnesses in a hostile territory is difficult. Anyone who returns can just claim "I was backpacking in Europe for a couple of years and lost my passport".
 
Segnosaur said:
Anyone who returns can just claim "I was backpacking in Europe for a couple of years and lost my passport".
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I'm not sure I see the problem. It's customary for the state to not make a case against someone who has an alibi. Wrongdoers go free all the time because the state can't gather enough evidence to convict - or even prosecute. This is generally considered to be a feature, not a bug, of the system.

That said, if you have someone in custody, and you *can* make a case... Then do it.
 
And regardless that hardly applies to a case like this where the woman is hardly putting any effort into denying or hiding it.

We'll worry about the cases where they claim they weren't later.
 
Segnosaur said:
One of the problems we are having (at least in Canada) is actually making a legal case against them... We can claim they are guilty of treason, or "aiding a terrorist organization" (or whatever the charge is), but how do you make the case? Its doubtful ISIS was keeping accurate census records, and trying to interview eye-witnesses in a hostile territory is difficult. Anyone who returns can just claim "I was backpacking in Europe for a couple of years and lost my passport".
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She's incriminated herself enough for a number of charges to stick, certainly enough to get her life in jail, and the intelligence services will have her communications from before she went. The problem is, if she does return, she won't get life because of 'sentencing guidelines' relating to her age and 'vulnerability'.
 
It transpires that the father of one of the girls took part in a flag burning exercise by one of the hate preachers. He has to take some responsibility for his daughter's inculcation with radicalism.

This Shamima Begum woman, although she sounds vile, was just fifteen when she was caught up in idealistic fervour. She has become detached from reality, living as she has for four years in a rabid fanatical environment (rather like people rescued from brainwashing cults). She likely feels cognitive dissonance in feelings of comradeship on the one hand with her fellow 'fighters' and her desire to give her unborn child a better life by returning to the UK.

Perhaps the UK should turn the other cheek, show compassion (for the innocent baby, at least) and demonstrate to the deluded zealots how Christianity works.

Love thine enemy, not behead them.
 
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