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ISIS teenager wants to come home

Wudang said:
Actually after a long argument between Cosmic Yak and I it's clear he has a good understanding and where we differ is a few areas of interpretation - i.e. the (to me) awfulness of the power under section 40 and interpretation of some clauses in the Bangladeshi nationality act where I believe they are unclear.
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Thanks. I'm more than happy to debate these issues, and I have no problem with us agreeing to disagree. I do object to people characterising me as ignorant, though, and I appreciate you saying that I'm not. :thumbsup:
 
A fuller citation for and from Vixen, in which she says that Begum should not be held responsible for her actions:

Vixen said:
Come off it. Think back to when you were fifteen. Can you honestly say hand on heart your peers or an older age group didn't persuade you to do, say or wear something that, looking back, you realise was utterly stupid and would never have happened were you an adult?

Should you be held responsible evermore for wearing those stacked platform boots or getting paralytic drunk on vodka and gin or joining some whacko political or religious group because you thought their ideas were great at the time.

Or do you understand that you were an immature un-fully formed person as of that age?
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Cosmic Yak said:
Yeah, sorry, but you still haven't answered this one. You were the one that picked up on this, remember? I think it only fair that you should state your position clearly.
As for 'hearsay', she is on record admitting joining a terrorist organisation. Did you perhaps miss her saying that?
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So, Vixen, what say you? Responsible or not?
 
Cosmic Yak said:
Let me try asking this again, as none of Begum's fanclub deigned to answer last time.
OK, she is brought back to the UK, sentenced, and found guilty of terrorist offences. Then what?
If she is placed in the general prison population, there is a significant risk of her radicalising those around her. If she is placed with other Islamist convicts, this creates a crucible of fundamentalism, leading to more of a threat. So, is she to be placed in solitary confinement for the duration of her sentence?
Then, what happens after she is released? Will she have to be watched, or do we just assume that she's rid herself of her murderous tendencies and is now fully rehabilitated?
What do we do with her? How do we ensure that she is no longer a threat to British society?
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I don't see why wandering around stateless would reduce the threat
 
Olmstead said:
What factual evidence?

Here's my evidence for her being groomed: The age of consent in the UK is 16. She was 15 went she went off to be an underage bride in a war zone at the behest of people much older than her, people who had influenced her into thinking that this was the right course of action through obviously manipulative means.

Meanwhile, the evidence against her being groomed is what? The fact that she agreed with the groomers? Hard to imagine how that could have come about.

And don't you dare tell me that the evidence of her not being groomed is that a court decided that she wasn't groomed.
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As others have shown, none of the courts have even ruled on her being groomed (an abdication of responsibility but then all the court rulings have been repugnant to the law in every aspect of this case), despite their being plenty of evidence to say yes and also to say by an intelligence agent of an ally working in the UK with the blessing and at least broad knowledge of the government.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
As others have shown, none of the courts have even ruled on her being groomed (an abdication of responsibility but then all the court rulings have been repugnant to the law in every aspect of this case), despite their being plenty of evidence to say yes and also to say by an intelligence agent of an ally working in the UK with the blessing and at least broad knowledge of the government.
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We've been over your conspiracy theories before, and found them to be groundless.
SIAC did examine whether Begum had been groomed, and found there was insufficient evidence to show this had happened. Begum wanted to join ISIS. We know this. Again, the Begum fanclub simply ignores the actual evidence.
Oh, and what does 'repugnant to the law' mean?
 
Begum may have found an unexpected supporter now that Nigel Farraj has decided that while he was previously sure that it was right & proper that she be stripped of her UK citizenship and exiled, on reflection he may not have spent enough time considering what Elon Musk might want.

The Independent
 
P.J. Denyer said:
Begum may have found an unexpected supporter now that Nigel Farraj has decided that while he was previously sure that it was right & proper that she be stripped of her UK citizenship and exiled, on reflection he may not have spent enough time considering what Elon Musk might want.

The Independent
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That won't please his base. But, like all Gammons, they'll forget all about it when Farage pulls the next squirrel out of his bag.
 
RolandRat said:
That won't please his base. But, like all Gammons, they'll forget all about it when Farage pulls the next squirrel out of his bag.
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To my surprise there was a writer from the Daily Heil (or possibly the Heil on Sunday) speaking in favour of returning her to the UK.
 
Middle East Eye quoted Ms. Begum's Solicitor Gareth Peirce as saying in part, "It is impossible to dispute that a 15-year-old British child was in 2014-15 lured, encouraged, and deceived for the purposes of sexual exploitation to leave home and travel to ISIL-controlled territory for the known purpose of being given, as a child, to an ISIL fighter to propagate children for the Islamic State. It is equally impossible not to acknowledge the catalogue of failures to protect a child known for weeks beforehand to be at high risk when a close friend had disappeared to Syria in an identical way and via an identical route."
 
Chris_Halkides said:
To my way of thinking, what happened when she was fifteen nullifies arguments about much of what she did when she became an adult. If not, then the place to make the argument is in a British court, once she returns there.
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Of course I'm not British or familiar with UK law. But I thougt individuals that are 15 are considered children. Can not sign contracts etc.

Can't see how she broke the law even.
 
acbytesla said:
Of course I'm not British or familiar with UK law. But I thougt individuals that are 15 are considered children. Can not sign contracts etc.

Can't see how she broke the law even.
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The basic age of legal responsibility is 11 although young age is a mitigating factor as is having been groomed, manipulated or coerced.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
I stand corrected, I was going from memory and misremembered.
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They're all over the place in the US. But no contract signed by anyone under the age of 18 isn't enforceable. They are wards of their parents or the state.

I guess I'm curious though. What English law did she break? Seems to me that those who want to punish her can't show the crime she committed. Or was some ex post facto law created?

(I made a mistake and fixed it.)
 
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acbytesla said:
They're all over the place in the US. But no contract signed by anyone under the age of 18 is enforceable. They are wards of their parents or the state.

I guess I'm curious though. What English law did she break? Seems to me that those who want to punish her can't show the crime she committed. Or was some ex post facto law created?
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In the UK you can sign some contracts at 16, for example for employment employment (possibly younger IANAL), but you can't (or couldn't when I was younger anyway) get any kind of credit agreement. The charges Begum would face would likely be about support for a terrorist group once she was above 16 or 18 IIUC, but since no charges have ever actually been brought...
 
acbytesla said:
They're all over the place in the US. But no contract signed by anyone under the age of 18 is enforceable. They are wards of their parents or the state.

I guess I'm curious though. What English law did she break? Seems to me that those who want to punish her can't show the crime she committed. Or was some ex post facto law created?
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The way I see it, national security concerns don't have to be attached to anything in the criminal code. They can simply be valid concerns in their own right.
 
theprestige said:
The way I see it, national security concerns don't have to be attached to anything in the criminal code. They can simply be valid concerns in their own right.
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Then by that logic, Biden would have had every right to arrest and incarcerat Trump on January 21st 2021. You're either a nation of laws, or you're not.
 
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acbytesla said:
Then by that logic, Biden would have every right to arrest and incarcerated Trump on January 21st 2021. You're either a nation of laws, or you're not.
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I agree with that logic, but you're leaving out one part: While national security concerns can be valid in their own right, they can also be invalid. My actual logic is that you have to impeach a claimed national security concern on some other basis than whether a specific criminal law has already been broken.

Unless your nation has a law that everyone is entitled to enter its jurisdiction unless they have committed a crime in that jurisdiction, there's not really a "nation of laws" issue here.
 
acbytesla said:
Then by that logic, Biden would have had every right to arrest and incarcerat Trump on January 21st 2021. You're either a nation of laws, or you're not.
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To take this further, IMV, the most important clauses in the US Constitution are Article I, Sections 9 & 10. It specifically prohibits ex post facto laws or bill of attainder.

This girl not only doesn’t appear to have committed a crime, there seems to be very little reason to believe she constitutes any security risk.
 
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theprestige said:
I agree with that logic, but you're leaving out one part: While national security concerns can be valid in their own right, they can also be invalid. My actual logic is that you have to impeach a claimed national security concern on some other basis than whether a specific criminal law has already been broken.

Unless your nation has a law that everyone is entitled to enter its jurisdiction unless they have committed a crime in that jurisdiction, there's not really a "nation of laws" issue here.
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My understanding is that this person is a British Citizen. She did not break any UK law. And it seems highly unlikely she is any security risk. It's more, we don't like the cause you left the country for so we're going to make up on the fly why we'll take away your citizenship. Not to mention she appears to have been just a dumb impressionable kid when she left.
 
acbytesla said:
To take this further, tIMV, the most important clauses in the US Constitution are Article I, Sections 9 & 10. It specifically prohibits ex post facto laws or bill of attainder.

This girl not only doesn’t appear to have committed a crime, there seems to be very little reason to believe she constitutes any security risk.
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Well, supporting a terrorist group we were actually at war with, however the defense that she'd been groomed while underage has legs as does the fact that western security services helped traffic her to them and once there she was under coertion. Of course the way to resolve these issues would be to allow her back and test them in court.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
Well, supporting a terrorist group we were actually at war with, however the defense that she'd been groomed while underage has legs as does the fact that western security services helped traffic her to them and once there she was under coertion. Of course the way to resolve these issues would be to allow her back and test them in court.
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Maybe I'm soft. And maybe I haven't thought this thoroughly through. But it seems to me that written statutes should be made. Not just seat of the pants decision making. Was she an actual enemy combatant? Did she fire weapons at allied forces? Or was she just a dumb stupid kid?
 
acbytesla said:
My understanding is that this person is a British Citizen. She did not break any UK law. And it seems highly unlikely she is any security risk. It's more, we don't like the cause you left the country for so we're going to make up on the fly why we'll take away your citizenship. Not to mention she appears to have been just a dumb impressionable kid when she left.
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Yes, I agree with all of this. Note that all of the attempts to impeach the national security rationale have not been based on whether she committed a crime. They've all been based on whether she's a plausible security risk. I don't think she is.
 
acbytesla said:
Maybe I'm soft. And maybe I haven't thought this thoroughly through. But it seems to me that written statutes should be made. Not just seat of the pants decision making. Was she an actual enemy combatant? Did she fire weapons at allied forces? Or was she just a dumb stupid kid?
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Aiding an enemy in a time of war is an offence on the statuate books. William Joyce was hung for it and he wasn't a combatant and didn't fire a weapon. I'm not prejudging the outcome of a trial and I think the removal of her passport was seat of the pants decision making, but I think there is potentially a charge to answer but if so it should be through the courts and not a summary judgement by a politician with one eye on the press.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
Aiding an enemy in a time of war is an offence on the statuate books. William Joyce was hung for it and he wasn't a combatant and didn't fire a weapon. I'm not prejudging the outcome of a trial and I think the removal of her passport was seat of the pants decision making, but I think there is potentially a charge to answer but if so it should be through the courts and not a summary judgement by a politician with one eye on the press.
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Yes, it is. But what exactly does it mean to aid the enemy? I don't think giving some soldier a blowjob is what is meant by that statute. Hard to say this 15 year old girl is the equivalent of a 34 year old man becoming a NAZI citizen in 1940. Joyce was also far more than that. He fled to Germany where he wrote and read German propaganda in English. Sort of like a British version of Tokyo Rose.

And it's arguable whether the UK was at war with ISIS. The same can not be said about Joyce in 1940. The UK had been at war with Germany for more than a year.
 
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acbytesla said:
Yes, it is. But what exactly does it mean to aid the enemy? I don't think giving some soldier a blowjob is what is meant by that statute. Hard to say this 15 year old girl is the equivalent of a 34 year old man becoming a NAZI citizen in 1940. Joyce was also far more than that. He fled to Germany where he wrote and read German propaganda in English. Sort of like a British version of Tokyo Rose.

And it's arguable whether the UK was at war with ISIS. The same can not be said about Joyce in 1940. The UK had been at war with Germany for more than a year.
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And that would be why I've already pointed out the mitigating factors of her age etc and said that if it is to be decided it should be decided by a court and not by a politician. I'm not sure exactly what activities when's alleged to have been involved in while with ISIS, but I doubt that would be part of a prosecution case. Unless such a case were brought I don't think there's a lot else to add.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
And that would be why I've already pointed out the mitigating factors of her age etc and said that if it is to be decided it should be decided by a court and not by a politician. I'm not sure exactly what activities when's alleged to have been involved in while with ISIS, but I doubt that would be part of a prosecution case. Unless such a case were brought I don't think there's a lot else to add.
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I agree it should be decided by a judge. Not a politician. But unfortunately, far too many judicial decisions are affected by politics.
 
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