Comment
HARRY COLE
Shamima Begum made her choice and Britain owes her nothing… we need to be honest about what bringing her back would mean
Trump official Sebastian Gorka says Britain should take back Shamima Begum back
WE should be getting used to the Americans meddling in our affairs, yet this one really stuck in the craw.
Right-wing TV pundit turned junior Trump official Sebastian Gorka says Britain should take back Shamima Begum as a goodwill gesture.
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The ISIS poster girl, who was stripped of her British citizenship in 2019, is now a bored 25 year old rotting in a Syrian refugee camp and hopefully regretting her life choices.
Inevitably, Mr Gorka has triggered another round of handwringing.
But his lecture may have carried more weight had the US not held a dozen terrorists without trial for nearly 25 years now.
That is not how we do things over here, so I would politely suggest he butts out.
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For now, Labour are talking a good game.
As the Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: “She’s not a UK national. We will act in our security interests.”
Now I am not averse to us taking responsibility for innocents, but security is the nub of it.
The truth is, we have already repatriated British orphans from the Syrian camps and put them into the care system.
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These blighted terror tots, who found themselves in a living hell through no fault of their own, were successfully extracted by British troops.
They were the children of our dead citizens who turned their back on the West to take the knee to a bloody death cult.
ISIS bride Shamima Begum LOSES battle for British citizenship and must stay in Syria for now
Many of these maniac mums and dads met their fate at the sharp end of an RAF Reaper drone, and rightly so.
But their kids had no choice, and it is right that we have brought them back to whatever tiny chance they have to recover from the most horrific and cruel start in life.
But Begum is different.
And ministers have the files — hence why they stripped her UK passport.
This was no blushing ISIS bride but — according to her barbaric comrades, who were captured by the Dutch — an active militant who wielded an AK47.
The intelligence they shared with Britain is terrifying.
And when it was leaked to me in 2019, never officially denied.
Witnesses say they saw poor innocent Shamima preparing suicide vests for would-be martyrs — sewing them on to the bombers so they couldn’t escape their orders.
What’s more, Begum stayed to the bitter end when ISIS was routed from Raqqa in 2017.
Plenty of aspiring jihadis quickly saw the error of their ways after heading from Europe to the sandy killing fields of Syria and got out.
Not Begum.
SUICIDE VESTS
She says: “When we lost Raqqa, we had to keep moving and moving and moving.” (Note the use of “we”.)
She has denied preparing suicide vests, but added obnoxiously: “They don’t have proof that I did anything dangerous.”
So let’s at least be honest about what bringing her back actually means.
Many will talk loftily about putting her on trial in Britain, but that is nonsense.
Leaving aside the moral shock of hundreds fleeing middle-class comfort for the middle-ages of the caliphate, it would be a legal black hole, too.
The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act made it illegal to travel to terror hotspots.
But it only came into force in 2019 and cannot be applied retrospectively.
Much of the intelligence gathered after the fall of Raqqa is unlikely to be admissible in court for a crime that did not take place in this country.
As mentioned before, we don’t lock up people without a trial like our cousins across the Pond, so what her advocates are really saying is Free Shamima.
Our security services are already stretched to breaking point, as the horrors of the Manchester bombing inquiry showed.
They are being asked not only to police against a constant Islamist threat, but root out the far-right and now get involved in smashing Channel smugglers.
PUBLIC PURSE
Arguing for Begum to come back is arguing that vital resources, dozens of officers every day, should be diverted to babysit her as she saunters from the breakfast TV studios to the benefits office.
She will be living off the public purse under 24-hour surveillance for both our protection and hers.
All the while, other plots may slip through the net that could see yet more maimed and killed simply for living their free lives.
I don’t want that on my conscience, or the public backlash at another attack missed when Begum has drained operational budgets.
Her fate lies solely in the hands of the Kurds who are currently guarding her or that nice cuddly new Syrian regime.
She made a choice in 2015 to leave, and she made a choice every day until 2018 to stay.
Britain owes her nothing.
I’M told the one-on-one relationship between Donald Trump and Sir Keir Starmer is warm, friendly and professional.
But behind the scenes, the transition period has been far from smooth.
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The appointment of Peter Mandelson as US Ambassador was a particular flashpoint – not least because key figures who will be in the White House next week found out about it from reading X/Twitter.
Just days before, new No10 National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell had been in Florida for meetings with the Trump team.
They had made it very clear that while a new ambassador appointment was to be expected, they had a good relationship with current incumbent Dame Karen Pierce and would like her to stay to guide through the early parts of Trump’s second term.
I hear direct attempts by Powell to make up were rebuffed, with his calls going unanswered.
Only when No10 made clear Pierce would be staying for next week’s inauguration and Starmer’s first visit to DC – due early next month – did things calm down.
But they took another step backwards when the contents of a Trump and Starmer call found their way into the press.
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This backroom relationship is going to be vital to Starmer’s government.
The verdict of Trump’s allies so far? “Deeply unimpressed,” according to my mole.