Whatever your opinion of the poor teenage choices she made and the circumstances in which she made them, it is unconscionable to abandon her in the desert. She was born in Britain and was trafficked, essentially for sex, at the age of 15 – under the legal age of consent. And god paid a price for me: three children dead, four years in a prison camp. There is a case for us to let her come back just for compassionate reasons.
In the four years since she was discovered in a Kurdish-controlled detention camp in northeastern Syria, pregnant, brainwashed by IS propaganda, traumatized by the death of her two young children and still just 19 years old, the government has portrayed Ms. Begum as an unrepentant terrorist and a threat to national security. Instead of bringing her home, he tried to cut her off from British justice and prevent her repatriation.
This abdication of responsibility projects weakness, not strength. The legal, moral and security arguments for repatriating Ms Begum and the handful of other British women in her place are unanswered. Ministers can only insist on this patently failed policy because they think it is good policy.
Human trafficking has been a cornerstone of ISIS’s state-building project. Vulnerable young women and girls were targeted and coerced or tricked into travelling. Upon arrival, they were locked up in “women’s houses” and then forced into marriage, domestic servitude and sexual slavery.
During the APPG inquiry into British Victims of Trafficking in Syria, which I chair together with the former head of the British diplomatic service, Lord Jay, we learned that British institutions have systematically failed to prevent this vile trade. Public authorities failed to identify people at risk, failed to notify the families of the groomed girls and failed to prevent them from leaving the country.
The government is justifiably proud of its anti-trafficking efforts, underpinned by the Modern Slavery Act 2015 – but there is a blind spot when it comes to ISIS. Steve Harvey, who led anti-trafficking units at the Met and Europol, told our inquiry that “it is the state’s responsibility to identify victims of trafficking”. Despite being presented with overwhelming evidence that British women and children have been trafficked to Syria, the Home Office has refused to even assess which of the British women in the NES may be victims.
The government must now change course. Its do-nothing policy does not sit well with our allies who, following the example of the US, are repatriating their nationals from the region In March, Germany brought home 37 women and children. In July, France repatriated 51. The US called the UK’s position “irresponsible” and our Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS consider it a betrayal.
Some of the women will have cases to answer, but that is a decision for the Crown Prosecution Service to make and the British courts to try. As MI6’s former Director of Global Counter-Terrorism, Richard Barrett, wrote in this newspaper: “the only way to reduce the potential threat from British nationals in these detention facilities is to repatriate them and either prosecute them or reintegrate them into the society. work within a framework of the rule of law’.
This is the growing consensus of security officials, at home and abroad. It is also morally correct. There is still time for our government to right its wrongs.
The Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell is Conservative MP for Sutton Coldfield and Co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for British Victims of Trafficking in Syria
title: “The Case For Shamima Begum S Return Is Now Indisputable Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-12” author: “Shannon Hewett”
Whatever your opinion of the poor teenage choices she made and the circumstances in which she made them, it is unconscionable to abandon her in the desert. She was born in Britain and was trafficked, essentially for sex, at the age of 15 – under the legal age of consent. And god paid a price for me: three children dead, four years in a prison camp. There is a case for us to let her come back just for compassionate reasons.
In the four years since she was discovered in a Kurdish-controlled detention camp in northeastern Syria, pregnant, brainwashed by IS propaganda, traumatized by the death of her two young children and still just 19 years old, the government has portrayed Ms. Begum as an unrepentant terrorist and a threat to national security. Instead of bringing her home, he tried to cut her off from British justice and prevent her repatriation.
This abdication of responsibility projects weakness, not strength. The legal, moral and security arguments for repatriating Ms Begum and the handful of other British women in her place are unanswered. Ministers can only insist on this patently failed policy because they think it is good policy.
Human trafficking has been a cornerstone of ISIS’s state-building project. Vulnerable young women and girls were targeted and coerced or tricked into travelling. Upon arrival, they were locked up in “women’s houses” and then forced into marriage, domestic servitude and sexual slavery.
During the APPG inquiry into British Victims of Trafficking in Syria, which I chair together with the former head of the British diplomatic service, Lord Jay, we learned that British institutions have systematically failed to prevent this vile trade. Public authorities failed to identify people at risk, failed to notify the families of the groomed girls and failed to prevent them from leaving the country.
The government is justifiably proud of its anti-trafficking efforts, underpinned by the Modern Slavery Act 2015 – but there is a blind spot when it comes to ISIS. Steve Harvey, who led anti-trafficking units at the Met and Europol, told our inquiry that “it is the state’s responsibility to identify victims of trafficking”. Despite being presented with overwhelming evidence that British women and children have been trafficked to Syria, the Home Office has refused to even assess which of the British women in the NES may be victims.
The government must now change course. Its do-nothing policy does not sit well with our allies who, following the example of the US, are repatriating their nationals from the region In March, Germany brought home 37 women and children. In July, France repatriated 51. The US called the UK’s position “irresponsible” and our Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS consider it a betrayal.
Some of the women will have cases to answer, but that is a decision for the Crown Prosecution Service to make and the British courts to try. As MI6’s former Director of Global Counter-Terrorism, Richard Barrett, wrote in this newspaper: “the only way to reduce the potential threat from British nationals in these detention facilities is to repatriate them and either prosecute them or reintegrate them into the society. work within a framework of the rule of law’.
This is the growing consensus of security officials, at home and abroad. It is also morally correct. There is still time for our government to right its wrongs.
The Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell is Conservative MP for Sutton Coldfield and Co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for British Victims of Trafficking in Syria
title: “The Case For Shamima Begum S Return Is Now Indisputable Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-19” author: “Philip Ordway”
Whatever your opinion of the poor teenage choices she made and the circumstances in which she made them, it is unconscionable to abandon her in the desert. She was born in Britain and was trafficked, essentially for sex, at the age of 15 – under the legal age of consent. And god paid a price for me: three children dead, four years in a prison camp. There is a case for us to let her come back just for compassionate reasons.
In the four years since she was discovered in a Kurdish-controlled detention camp in northeastern Syria, pregnant, brainwashed by IS propaganda, traumatized by the death of her two young children and still just 19 years old, the government has portrayed Ms. Begum as an unrepentant terrorist and a threat to national security. Instead of bringing her home, he tried to cut her off from British justice and prevent her repatriation.
This abdication of responsibility projects weakness, not strength. The legal, moral and security arguments for repatriating Ms Begum and the handful of other British women in her place are unanswered. Ministers can only insist on this patently failed policy because they think it is good policy.
Human trafficking has been a cornerstone of ISIS’s state-building project. Vulnerable young women and girls were targeted and coerced or tricked into travelling. Upon arrival, they were locked up in “women’s houses” and then forced into marriage, domestic servitude and sexual slavery.
During the APPG inquiry into British Victims of Trafficking in Syria, which I chair together with the former head of the British diplomatic service, Lord Jay, we learned that British institutions have systematically failed to prevent this vile trade. Public authorities failed to identify people at risk, failed to notify the families of the groomed girls and failed to prevent them from leaving the country.
The government is justifiably proud of its anti-trafficking efforts, underpinned by the Modern Slavery Act 2015 – but there is a blind spot when it comes to ISIS. Steve Harvey, who led anti-trafficking units at the Met and Europol, told our inquiry that “it is the state’s responsibility to identify victims of trafficking”. Despite being presented with overwhelming evidence that British women and children have been trafficked to Syria, the Home Office has refused to even assess which of the British women in the NES may be victims.
The government must now change course. Its do-nothing policy does not sit well with our allies who, following the example of the US, are repatriating their nationals from the region In March, Germany brought home 37 women and children. In July, France repatriated 51. The US called the UK’s position “irresponsible” and our Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS consider it a betrayal.
Some of the women will have cases to answer, but that is a decision for the Crown Prosecution Service to make and the British courts to try. As MI6’s former Director of Global Counter-Terrorism, Richard Barrett, wrote in this newspaper: “the only way to reduce the potential threat from British nationals in these detention facilities is to repatriate them and either prosecute them or reintegrate them into the society. work within a framework of the rule of law’.
This is the growing consensus of security officials, at home and abroad. It is also morally correct. There is still time for our government to right its wrongs.
The Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell is Conservative MP for Sutton Coldfield and Co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for British Victims of Trafficking in Syria
title: “The Case For Shamima Begum S Return Is Now Indisputable Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-10-28” author: “Raymond Allison”
Whatever your opinion of the poor teenage choices she made and the circumstances in which she made them, it is unconscionable to abandon her in the desert. She was born in Britain and was trafficked, essentially for sex, at the age of 15 – under the legal age of consent. And god paid a price for me: three children dead, four years in a prison camp. There is a case for us to let her come back just for compassionate reasons.
In the four years since she was discovered in a Kurdish-controlled detention camp in northeastern Syria, pregnant, brainwashed by IS propaganda, traumatized by the death of her two young children and still just 19 years old, the government has portrayed Ms. Begum as an unrepentant terrorist and a threat to national security. Instead of bringing her home, he tried to cut her off from British justice and prevent her repatriation.
This abdication of responsibility projects weakness, not strength. The legal, moral and security arguments for repatriating Ms Begum and the handful of other British women in her place are unanswered. Ministers can only insist on this patently failed policy because they think it is good policy.
Human trafficking has been a cornerstone of ISIS’s state-building project. Vulnerable young women and girls were targeted and coerced or tricked into travelling. Upon arrival, they were locked up in “women’s houses” and then forced into marriage, domestic servitude and sexual slavery.
During the APPG inquiry into British Victims of Trafficking in Syria, which I chair together with the former head of the British diplomatic service, Lord Jay, we learned that British institutions have systematically failed to prevent this vile trade. Public authorities failed to identify people at risk, failed to notify the families of the groomed girls and failed to prevent them from leaving the country.
The government is justifiably proud of its anti-trafficking efforts, underpinned by the Modern Slavery Act 2015 – but there is a blind spot when it comes to ISIS. Steve Harvey, who led anti-trafficking units at the Met and Europol, told our inquiry that “it is the state’s responsibility to identify victims of trafficking”. Despite being presented with overwhelming evidence that British women and children have been trafficked to Syria, the Home Office has refused to even assess which of the British women in the NES may be victims.
The government must now change course. Its do-nothing policy does not sit well with our allies who, following the example of the US, are repatriating their nationals from the region In March, Germany brought home 37 women and children. In July, France repatriated 51. The US called the UK’s position “irresponsible” and our Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS consider it a betrayal.
Some of the women will have cases to answer, but that is a decision for the Crown Prosecution Service to make and the British courts to try. As MI6’s former Director of Global Counter-Terrorism, Richard Barrett, wrote in this newspaper: “the only way to reduce the potential threat from British nationals in these detention facilities is to repatriate them and either prosecute them or reintegrate them into the society. work within a framework of the rule of law’.
This is the growing consensus of security officials, at home and abroad. It is also morally correct. There is still time for our government to right its wrongs.
The Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell is Conservative MP for Sutton Coldfield and Co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for British Victims of Trafficking in Syria
