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Father of IS bride Amira Abase says girls should be allowed to return to Britain

By Sarah Hajibagheri, reporter, and Sunita Patel-Carstairs, news reporter

The father of one of the three Bethnal Green schoolgirls who ran away to join Islamic State has said they should be allowed to return to Britain.

In a tearful interview with Sky News, Hussen Abase said "they made a mistake" and "should be forgiven" because they did not know what they were doing.

He blamed social media for luring his daughter Amira to Syria when she was just 15 years old.

"Teenagers don't contemplate things, they can be easily tricked," he said.

His comments come after one of the other girls in the group, Shamima Begum, said she is heavily pregnant and wants to come home for her baby's sake - but does not regret joining IS.

A Sky News poll asking if Shamima Begum should be allowed to return to the UK found that 76% think she should not, 16% believe she should and 8% did not know.

Mr Abase said none of the girls should face charges for their actions because they were teenagers when they left the country and had not committed any crime.

He said their ages at the time of fleeing home made them "vulnerable" to be "tricked" into travelling to Syria.

Asked if he thought Shamima Begum presented a danger to British society having spent time with IS, he replied: "Not at all."

The 52-year-old believes the three girls could be re-educated with help from the authorities.

"Twisted minds can be straightened with teamwork with the government and family," he said.

However, he said "the public have a right to say no" to Shamima Begum returning home if she had no regrets about what she had done.

:: Islamic State brides - where are they now?

After being shown an interview of the 19-year-old from a refugee camp in northern Syria, he appeared shocked at her admission that she had seen the head of a decapitated person in a bin - and admitted she was not fazed by it.

"She saw a head in the bin?" he said.

"That makes me think twice."

Mr Hussen said he had no idea what had happened to his daughter for he had not heard from her "for quite a long time".

But he said hearing Shamima Begum's story gave him hope.

Image: Kadiza Sultana (L) married an American, Shamima Begum (C) a Bosnian and Amira Abase an Australian

He said he would "give her a hug" if he was ever reunited with her.

Shamima Begum said she had seen two of her friends a fortnight ago, but it is not clear whether Amira Abase was one of them.

:: A nationally representative sample of 1,001 Sky customers were interviewed by SMS on 14 February 2019 about Shamima Begum.

Data are weighted to the profile of the population. Sky Data is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules. The results of the survey can be found here here.

Why Britain should allow Shamima Begum to return home

Back in February 2015, a blurry image showing three teenage girls passing through security barriers at Gatwick airport made headlines across the world. These ordinary-looking British schoolgirls, who had all been attending the Bethnal Green College in London, had grabbed the world's attention for a very sad reason: They were travelling to Syria to join the death cult that is the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).

Amira Abase, Shamima Begum and Kadiza Sultana were only 15-16 when they made the decision to abandon their families, their friends and a promising future in the United Kingdom to build themselves new lives in a warzone. Their families said they were "normal, happy teenagers" before their disappearance. Britain, and the entire international community, was in shock.

At the time, the runaways sparked an important conversation: What had motivated them to do this? Was there a chance to prevent this? Can Britain do anything to save these children from themselves?

Pundits, experts and politicians spent weeks trying to provide answers to these questions. Some put the blame on the security forces and the government, others blamed the girls' families, many tried to plead with them to come back and a few warned them that they would face prosecution if they ever choose to return home. But, as expected, the news cycle eventually moved on. The world forgot about these young "ISIL brides-to-be", as tabloids called them.

Earlier this month, almost exactly four years after they left Britain, however, one of these girls, Shamima Begum, now 19 and living in a refugee camp in northern Syria, grabbed international headlines once again. Kadiza Sultana, we learned, had been killed in an air raid in 2016. The whereabouts of Amira Abase was unknown.

In an interview with the Times newspaper, Shamima revealed that she was heavily pregnant with a Dutch ISIL fighter's child and, most crucially, she said that she is hoping to "return home" for the sake of her unborn baby.

Suddenly, this vulnerable young woman was once again at the centre of an important national discussion: Should she be given another chance? Should any ISIL returnee be allowed back into Britain?

As the discussions continued, the Home Office revoked her citizenship.

Many celebrated Javid's seemingly strong stance against "terrorists". But the decision to abandon this young woman to her fate was a mistake, for multiple reasons.

A child's decision

When Shamima travelled to Syria, she was just 15 years old. She was too young to vote, give consent or make any life-altering decisions. In other words, she was a vulnerable child, a British child, and the state failed to protect her. Today, she is a 19-year-old young woman, who survived four years in a warzone, under an oppressive misogynistic regime, in abominable conditions, and is equally vulnerable. Her lack of regret maybe because she is pressured. The state cannot convict her to a life of misery on the basis of decisions she made as a child. The UK still has a duty of care towards Shamima and many others like her who are now facing the consequences of decisions they took as children.

Shamima was neither the first nor the last Briton to leave the country to join an extremist group. According to an estimation by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), 41,490 people from 80 countries joined ISIL in Iraq and Syria between April 2013 and June 2018 and at least 850 of them were British citizens. Many of these people were either minors or young adults, such as Salma and Zahra Halane (the so-called "terror twins" who travelled to Syria at the age of 14) or Talha Asmal (a 17-year-old A-level student who became the youngest British suicide bomber after detonating a bomb near an oil refinery in Iraq).

This shows that the government's methods to prevent radicalisation are clearly not working. If we want to stop British children like Shamima, Salma, Zahra or Talha from travelling to warzones and joining ISIL or other death cults, we need to take new, fundamentally different approaches.

Refusing to allow Britons who made the mistake of joining ISIL back into the UK may make the right-wing tabloids or Twitter patriots happy, yet it won't stop radicalisation of other young people.

Since the first conviction of a Syrian returnee, Mashudur Choudhury, in 2014, the number of returnees to Britain has surged to approximately 400. The desire for many of these individuals to return - even though they know that they likely will be persecuted and jailed - offers us an opportunity for rehabilitation. With the right approach, many of these individuals could provide a counternarrative that might be used to explain the dangers of joining ISIL-like groups to vulnerable youth and help prevent future generations from taking that route. In other words, these returnees can be transformed into assets that could help the state stop ISIL and similar other groups from brainwashing British children.

If Shamima is not allowed back in, she may be forced back into another radical group and become a real security threat. But if she is allowed back in, there would be a chance for her rehabilitation. By allowing Shamima to come home, UK can amend its past mistakes. She can face a fair trial, if found guilty of any crime, pay her dues to the society and with the help of social services one day be integrated back to the community and be a reproductive member of society.

This is not wishful thinking. It is already happening elsewhere in Europe.

The Danish example

A high number of Danish citizens travelled to Syria to join ISIL and other similar armed groups in recent years, and many of them eventually chose to return to their home country. Unlike France, Britain or Germany, the Danish state does not automatically prosecute these individuals. It also does not try to revoke their citizenship rights. Instead, Danish officials allow these people to join a reintegration programme supported by the government. They are all offered practical help - ranging from treatment for shrapnel wounds, to psychological counselling, or help with job applications. This, of course, does not mean former fighters who have committed criminal acts abroad are not punished. Persons who have been found guilty of a crime under Danish law will still be imprisoned.

The Danish model appears to be working. Such programmes not only help create a relationship of trust between the state and former fighters, reducing security risks, they also save young lives by helping returnees re-integrate into society.

Britain can, and should, follow Denmark's example. 

Shamima was once "a poster girl for ISIL". Now, the British government has an opportunity to make her the face of a new, more efficient and humane way of dealing with radicalised youth. Banning this young woman from entering her home country would be playing into the hands of extremists. 

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.

Former Prosecutor: Effort to Bar British-Born IS Bride Likely to Fail

LONDON — 

The British government’s effort to revoke the citizenship of a British-born Islamic State bride, currently held in a refugee camp in northeast Syria, risks being overturned on appeal, say some legal experts.

A former top British prosecutor, Nazir Afzal, told VOA he thinks it “likely that this decision will be held to be unlawful.”

He says 19-year-old Shamima Begum should be repatriated and placed in a de-radicalization program. “We have excellent experience of de-radicalizing people and often they go on to work in preventing others from being radicalized armed with the unique knowledge of the journey of a radicalized person. This ultimately protects our fellow citizens,” he says.

Begum, who’s in a Kurdish-managed refugee camp in northeast Syria, joined the militant group in 2015 at the age of 15, running off with two school friends, all from east London. One of the girls died in an airstrike in 2016; the other, Amira Abase, is still in IS territory. At least 900 Britons, an estimated 145 of them women and 50 minors, joined IS.

What to do with them?

More than 900 foreign jihadists and 3,200 wives and children are being held by the Kurds, including U.S.-born Hoda Muthana, who’s being barred from returning to the United States on the grounds that she has no right to American citizenship.

According to the State Department, her Yemeni father held diplomatic status at the time of her birth, a claim denied by the girl’s family.

The question of what to do with surviving foreign IS recruits — especially IS brides, many of whom were teenagers when recruited — is fast becoming a major international crisis and prompting diplomatic rifts amid rising concerns that they represent a collective security risk if left in Syria, but also individual security threats, if returned to their home countries.

The Kurds have warned that they can’t keep the recruits much longer.

That is also the position of the Trump administration, which, for more than a year, has urged European governments to take back surviving recruits — and prosecute them. Otherwise, they will slip away, they say, from refugee and detention facilities in northeast Syria and pose a greater threat once unsupervised. Last Saturday, President Donald Trump urged the Europeans to take charge of their rogue citizens, saying the alternative is the Kurds will have to free them.

Viewed as threat

The Europeans, though, see the surviving fighters and their wives as a grim threat, the deadly legacy of a murderous movement that has been defeated on the battlefield. Western intelligence officials say they are already overstretched trying to monitor tens of thousands of suspected extremists who never left their home countries. And European governments say mounting prosecutions will be difficult as they won’t be able to gather sufficient evidence for convictions.

Opinion polls in Britain show the overwhelming majority does not want the IS survivors to be re-admitted. Amid a mounting public outcry about the possibility of Begum returning to Britain, British Interior Minister Sajid Javid Wednesday announced he was revoking her citizenship, saying that as her parents had been born in Bangladesh she is a dual national and therefore can apply for a Bangladeshi passport. Under international law, it is illegal for a country to make someone stateless by removing his or her citizenship.

FILE - Renu Begum, eldest sister of missing sister of missing British girl Shamima Begum, holds a picture of her sister while being interviewed by the media in central London, Feb. 22, 2015.

The Bangladeshi government, though, has now also declared that Begum, who gave birth Sunday to a boy, is not a Bangladeshi citizen, saying she is British by birth and has never applied for dual nationality with Bangladesh. The country's foreign minister, Shahriar Alam, says there is no question of her being allowed to enter Bangladesh.

Afzal says the British government failed to do due diligence before revoking Begum’s citizenship and that the revocation will likely be overturned, if her family appeals the decision, as they have indicated they will. Her family says she was groomed by IS recruiters. “The Bangladesh government has already confirmed that she is not one of theirs and a simple phone call before this decision was made would have shown that. It therefore seems likely that this decision will be held to be unlawful,” he says.

Redemption possible?

Afzal, a former CEO of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, gained national attention in Britain for pioneering difficult prosecutions to tackle honor-based violence and forced marriage, as well as child sexual exploitation and grooming by Muslim-based gangs in the northwest of England.

“She is British, born here, schooled here, radicalized here and therefore she is our problem,” he says. He argues she should be prosecuted for membership of “a proscribed terror organization and there may be other crimes after investigating and she should face justice here.”

But longer-term, Afzal places faith in the effectiveness of de-radicalization programs. He compares the IS recruitment of youngsters with sexual grooming. “I have long said that the process of grooming for extremism is the same as that for sexual exploitation and also organized crime. The manipulation of vulnerable people is at its heart.”

There is fierce debate over the effectiveness of de-radicalization programs, which aim to change a person's ideas and attitudes by not only tackling ideology but confronting personal issues which may have been at the root of the drive toward radicalization. And the picture is mixed across Europe with some rehabilitation methods being more successful than others.

Experts acknowledge that de-radicalization is not an exact science and techniques that work with one person fail with another. Each de-radicalization candidate has to be approached differently and the exercise has to be prolonged and is expensive both in terms of time and money, they say.

And even then success in not guaranteed. Ahmed Hassan, the Parsons Green tube bomber, who detonated a bomb on a train in London in 2017, injuring 51 people, had been enrolled in a de-radicalization program for months.

But there have also been plenty of documented successes, including Hanif Qadir, who was radicalized in 2002 and joined al-Qaida in Afghanistan before breaking with the militants when he recoiled at the use of children as suicide bombers. Now active in de-radicalization, he told the BBC he thought Begum would be a good candidate for rehabilitation.

That view is shared by the The Times reporter Anthony Loyd, who first interviewed the 19-year-old. Her inflammatory remarks to him and subsequent media interviewers, including expressing no remorse for joining IS and defending the beheadings carried out by the militants, prompted public outrage.

But writing in The Times Thursday, Loyd noted that in private conversation with him away from other IS members, she expressed deep anger about the group’s cruelty. Loyd wrote that he thought “within the mental confines placed upon her by the so-called caliphate there lurks an independently-minded young woman who, with the right help, may be able to emerge from her radicalized state.”