Muslima from UK has no regrets about joining ISIS, but wants to return to raise her child on welfare benefits
“Don’t let her back: Calls for unrepentant former London schoolgirl-turned ISIS bride to be BANNED from Britain – as heavily pregnant teenager, 19, begs to come home to have her third baby on NHS,” by Courtney Bartlett, Martin Robinson, and Zoie O’Brien, Mailonline, February 14, 2019:
A remorseless schoolgirl who fled London to join ISIS but wants to return so the NHS can care for her baby should be banned from Britain, critics said today.
Jihadi bride Shamima Begum was just 15 when she and two classmates Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase travelled to Syria in February 2015 but speaking from a refugee camp after the caliphate’s collapse she said: ‘I don’t regret coming here – now all I want to do is come home to Britain’.
Security minister Ben Wallace said there is no chance he would ‘risk lives’ to ‘go to look for terrorists’ because her ‘actions must have consequences’ – but admitted as a British citizen she has the right to return to the UK.
Begum is the only known survivor of the three friends from Bethnal Green and her two children died of disease and malnutrition before the age of one as the caliphate fell apart around her.
The schoolgirl claims she lived a ‘normal life’ in ISIS’ capital Raqqa and was ‘not fazed’ by the brutal execution of its enemies, recounting how she once found an ‘an enemy of Islam’s’ decapitated head in a bin.
But with her third baby now due any day and her jihadi husband Yago Riedijk captured, she has decided to quit and now wants to ‘live quietly’ back in the UK and ensure her baby survives with the help of the NHS.
In an extraordinary interview with The Times’ Anthony Loyd, she said: ‘I don’t regret coming here. But I have to think about my baby as well. After my two kids died I’m scared this baby is going to get sick – that’s why I really want to get back to Britain because I know it will be taken care of. Healthcare-wise at least’….
Her family’s lawyer Tasnime Akunjee, who represented the parents of all three girls, today insisted that Shamima is a ‘victim’ and should not be prosecuted for joining ISIS.
Begum said: ‘I’m not the same silly little 15-year-old schoolgirl who ran away from Bethnal Green four years ago.
‘I know what everyone at home thinks of me as I have read all that was written about me online. But I just want to come home to have my child. That’s all I want right now’.
She added: ‘I’ll do anything required just to be able to come home and live quietly with my child.’
I’m sure that London jihadist mayor would be happy to have her back.