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Seems the jihadi bride Shamima Begum might be coming back to stand trial in the U.K.

(395 Posts)
Urmstongran Fri 17-Jul-20 08:24:01

Oh no!
Once one comes back it’ll open the floodgates and they’ll all be back living here at the taxpayers expense.

I hope the Government’s appeal against her return next week is successful but it’s not looking good.

Chewbacca Sun 19-Jul-20 21:52:21

I also know people would be reacting very differently if she was white

No, I'm sorry biba70, you don't know that at all and statements of this kind are baseless and lazy. As stated upthread, when this was raised earlier; there was just as much outrage and condemnation about Sally Jones, Lisa Smith, Mary Kaya and Tooba Gondal. Jack Letts is a white male ISIS supporter who has also had his citizenship revoked, no one, as far as I'm aware, has condemned that have they? It's not the colour, age, gender, religion or ethnicity of ISIS supporters like Shamima Begum that has angered people; it's her actions, lack of remorse, lack of recognition for what she has done and her justification for what she has seen, done and enabled to be done. To try and hinge all of that on "Oh it's just because she's not white" minimises what she has done and it's affect on everyone.

Iam64 Sun 19-Jul-20 21:25:20

Well said biba70.

biba70 Sun 19-Jul-20 21:23:44

British Law, for British people - either you do, or you don't- you can't pick and choose. As a young friend said today 'So I don’t know if Shamima Begum was groomed and indoctrinated, or if, at the age of 15, she really was a blood thirsty murder enthusiast. I’m happy to let the courts decide what she’s guilty of, or not.
What I do know is she is a British citizen, she was a child at the time in question, and you can’t just make the law up as you bloody well choose to fit your agenda.
I also know people would be reacting very differently if she was white.'

biba70 Sun 19-Jul-20 21:21:29

Yes I do remember now - I did think it was Javid and not Patel.

It was mentionned earlier that Javid and Shamina had similar backgrounds and up-bringing- and this is absolutely ridiculous. Shamina is a Bengladeshi from Bethnal Green, and a girl. Javid grew up in Bristol, and grew up in a family where education was valued and he and his brothers all did very well in their education and career (one sadly committed suicide due to pressure and depression). Javid is married to a British Anglican woman and was allowed to become a 'cultural' Muslim by his family. Totally different culture and childhood/youth. Just because the are both 'brown' does not mean they have grown up in similar circumstances.

Chewbacca Sun 19-Jul-20 20:49:30

I'm fairly sure that there's another young British woman, with 5 children, who is waiting to see if she can come back to the UK as well but I can't remember her name.

Callistemon Sun 19-Jul-20 20:39:10

biba70

'Choices, people, choices.' - how many 15 year olds do you know who have made the wrong choice?

Who was the Home Secretary who stripped her of her nationality - leaving her with none? Javid or Patel?

confused
Can you not remember?
It was Sajid Javid, well reported at the time and discussed at length on here.

tickingbird Sun 19-Jul-20 20:36:17

It was Javid

Urmstongran Sun 19-Jul-20 20:34:49

I’m grateful both Javid &Patel are BAME.
Can you even imagine the comments if the decision had been taken by a Tory government Minister named ‘Smith’ or ‘Jones’?
?

EllanVannin Sun 19-Jul-20 20:33:15

I think a lot would depend on the " wrong choices " made, Callistemon ?

Anyone who's emotionless is a natural psychopath. This isn't through trauma that the woman's suffering, it's probably because things didn't work out as she'd hoped.
Only time will tell---and a very watchful eye.

Urmstongran Sun 19-Jul-20 20:31:00

Javid.

biba70 Sun 19-Jul-20 20:29:05

'Choices, people, choices.' - how many 15 year olds do you know who have made the wrong choice?

Who was the Home Secretary who stripped her of her nationality - leaving her with none? Javid or Patel?

Callistemon Sun 19-Jul-20 20:19:57

We all make wrong choices sometimes.
But, in the main, we regret and learn from them.
I hope she will, but she has seen and experienced many horrors and seems emotionless.

I do worry that, having been groomed, indoctrinated, used and desensitised to murder, rape etc that she is now being used again as a test case by lawyers who may not care for her or her welfare but are using her to set a precedent.

Urmstongran Sun 19-Jul-20 19:56:08

Choices, people, choices.

Chewbacca Sun 19-Jul-20 19:53:05

I'm not sure she's "lucky^ Urmstongran although I know what you mean. I wouldn't want any of my loved ones to be in the situation that she's got herself into. Her life will never be the same again and I suspect that, both within her community and outside of it, she will be treated with suspicion and contempt.

biba70 Sun 19-Jul-20 19:51:31

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Callistemon Sun 19-Jul-20 19:50:58

I wonder what Shamima would be doing now if the group she was with were not defeated and she was not living in a camp?
Would she still be wanting to come back here and be full of remorse or would she be still enabling the rape of little girls half her age and other young women, sewing suicide vests for other children?

Urmstongran Sun 19-Jul-20 19:44:55

‘Lessons have been learnt’ I daresay.
Not until the next time, at a different Academy.

Lucky Shamina eh?

Urmstongran Sun 19-Jul-20 19:42:07

Well thanks for nothing then Bethnal Green Academy.

Iam64 Sun 19-Jul-20 19:40:34

Chewbacca thanks for the extract from the New Statesman article. The issue of friendship dominating to the exclusion of anything else, including families should be familiar to most of us. We may not have taken it to this extreme but how many of us were furious at being expected to conform to school uniform but conformed to the long straight hair, Levi's, big hoop ear ring, or whatever 'look' your friendship group aspired to.
Ellianne, I assume that if the police spoke to the students, they sought permission from parents to do so. I suppose the truth is, these were bright, competent girls who succeeded in convincing their families, teachers, social workers and police that they weren't about to follow the example set by Sharmeena Begum

Ellianne Sun 19-Jul-20 18:38:49

Iam64 The Headmaster at Bethnal Green Academy issued the following statement at the time........ "This situation follows an earlier disappearance of a student in December of last year. The police spoke to that student’s friends at the time and further to this, they indicated that there was no evidence that the girls were at risk of being radicalised or absconding." How could the police, the school and the parents and siblings all be unaware of what was going on?

Chewbacca Sun 19-Jul-20 18:35:55

You raise some salient points Iam64; and considering that Sharmeena Begum had left shortly before Shamima Begum, Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase and there were then 5 further young women who attempted to follow them, the Academy was certainly slow to act. I found this extract from an article in the New Statesman which tries to explain and make sense of why teenage girls are so attracted:

Friendship played a big role. In December 2014, Sharmeena Begum (no relation to Shamima), who was friendly with the trio, ran away to Syria. She had been deeply unhappy following the death of her mother and her father’s remarriage. It appears that Sharmeena played a key role in convincing her friends to follow. “They were schooled into it by the first girl who’d gone,” Akunjee says. “It’s all about the friendship circle and that bond. The psychology around teenagers is that their friends are everything and their families are nothing.”

Radicalisation is a complex and poorly understood phenomenon; grooming may have played a role with the Bethnal Green girls, but the group psychology of this close-knit group was also crucial. One of the reasons the case made such a huge impact was that it was the first widely known example of a group of women radicalising together offline. “For some reason, the authorities were very aware men would go in groups but they hadn’t thought the same thing about women,” says Smith.

Iam64 Sun 19-Jul-20 18:19:41

There were multi agency meetings about Ms Begum and her friends at the school because of the belief they were being radicalised by Isis people on line. I think by two women. Police, social workers and teachers all kept these meetings secret. This flies in the face of all the guidance about safeguarding and working together.
The Police and social work teams (presumable working together) decided eventually that the parents should be informed about the concerns their daughters were regularly communicating with Isis supporters. They reached the (unbelievable) conclusion the best way to do this, would be to inform the girls and ask them to give letters expressing these concerns to their parents. No surprise that the letters went in the bin and were never seen by parents.
I stress, I'm not seeking to dismiss the concerns expressed here about the potential threat posed by Ms Begum and other young men and women who chose to go and support/fight for the caliphate. Most rebellious 15 year olds wouldn't choose that course of action. Young Muslim children might though, if subjected to relentless images of Muslim children killed by bombs from Western countries. I stress here - I don't seek to minimise the worry about radicalisation.

If this was my daughter and the agencies charge with safeguarding her, had failed to inform me of her on line activities, I'd be justifiably livid.
If children are playing truant, or acting out in lessons, the response isn't to ask the child to take a letter home. What on earth was going on in this academy, or this police/social work investigation.
Safeguarding concerns are always discussed with parents unless there is a real and present risk to the children concerned. Why was this situation different?

eazybee Sun 19-Jul-20 17:15:06

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Ellianne Sun 19-Jul-20 15:47:30

X post Chewbacca

Ellianne Sun 19-Jul-20 15:46:43

I tripped up on the two girls Callistemon, but after further research found the other girl who went there a few months earlier was actually friends with the three girls. They were all at Bethnal Green Academy. Realising what was then going on between the girls far and wide, (probably on social network), that was when the authorities sent the letters home.
The other girl was actually very clever at deceiving everyone and getting herself over there, so my suspicions are she organised everything from her end to get the other three across.