Shamima Begum: Isis bride will not be allowed to return to UK from Syria, says home secretary

Former jihadi begged to come back last week, even if it meant prison

Former Isis bride Shamima Begum has reportedly been told once again by the home secretary that she will never be allowed back to the UK.

Ms Begum, who was 15-years-old when she secretly fled her home in Bethnal Green, east London, in 2015 to join the terrorist group, is now living in a camp run by Kurdish forces in northern Syria.

She has repeatedly begged British authorities to permit her to return, even if that meant imprisonment in a UK jail.

In an interview last week, Ms Begum said her only role in the caliphate was to “make babies”, adding that her mental health was poor after all three of the children she bore a Dutch Isis fighter died.

Earlier this year, the London-born teenager was stripped of her British citizenship by the former home secretary Sajid Javid on the grounds that her Bangladeshi heritage meant she could claim citizenship there instead.

Now his successor Priti Patel has also flatly ruled out Ms Begum’s return.

“Our job is to keep our country safe,” she told The Sun. “We don’t need people who have done harm and left our country to be part of a death cult and to perpetuate that ideology.

“We cannot have people who would do us harm allowed to enter our country – and that includes this woman.”

Under British law, a person can have their citizenship revoked but they cannot be made stateless.

When she was first tracked down by British journalists earlier this year, Ms Begum, now 19, appeared to still harbour some support for Isis and its murderous ideology, even after the group had lost practically all of the territory it had held across Iraq and Syria.

She defended atrocities such as the Manchester Arena bombing, which claimed the lives of 22 people leaving an Ariana Grande concert, and the abduction and sexual slavery imposed on Yazidi girls.

She has since claimed she was brainwashed and now despises the organisation.

After her third child died in the camp at just a few weeks old, she told reporters she regretted joining Isis and had been hoodwinked into going to Syria in the first place.

Anti-Isis activists have also questioned her claims she played no role in the caliphate, suggesting she was in fact a member of Isis’s feared morality police.

Ms Patel said: “Everything I see in terms of security and intelligence, I am simply not willing to allow anybody who has been an active supporter or campaigner for Isis in this country.”

But there are signs the government is considering trying to bring back the children of former Isis fighters and supporters from the camps in Syria.

Boris Johnson is considering plans to send in special forces troops to help extract about 30 under-16s and bring them back home, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday.

The newspaper claims there is a rift within the National Security Council over the scheme, with legal and practical concerns leading many cabinet ministers to oppose the plan.