Shamima Begum claims that her Islamic State husband raped her in Syria in bid to regain UK citizenship

A counter terror expert says ISIS bride Shamima Begum is only showing remorse because she wants to come back to the UK.

The east London schoolgirl’s legal team is today launching a legal bid to reinstate her citizenship so she can return to Britain.

Her lawyers say she will argue that she was the victim of ‘statutory rape’ by her ISIS militant husband Yago Riedijk, 23.

The now 19-year-old’s lawyer Tasnime Akunjee said that Begum was married in an ‘Isis ceremony within two weeks of reaching Syria’ when she was 15-years-old.

He told the Daily Mirror: ‘Her context is as a rape victim or a statutory rape victim.’ Her legal team are set to argue that her case cannot be heard without her.

It is unclear if her legal team will attempt to take the rape allegations to the British courts if she has her citizenship reinstated, and whether she would even be able to launch proceedings in the UK because the alleged rape occurred in Syria.

Chris Phillips, counter terrorism expert told Good Morning Britain: ‘She’s not 15 now, she’s 19.

‘She had full and frank knowledge of what she was doing. She was fully committed in the murders or the group who carried out the murders.

‘She is only showing remorse as she wants to come back.

‘She won’t be sentenced as there’s no evidence that she was involved so she won’t face trial.

‘She’s 15 and lived in the east end of London she knew what she was doing.’

Today, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, a specialist court which hears challenges to decisions to remove someone’s British citizenship on national security grounds, will begin a four-day preliminary hearing in London.

Mrs Justice Elisabeth Laing is expected to deal with, among other things, whether depriving Ms Begum of her British citizenship rendered her stateless and was therefore unlawful.

Individuals appealing to SIAC usually remain anonymous, however it is understood that Ms Begum has waived her right to anonymity.

Former Met Chief Superintendent Del Dabu said that Britain has an ‘international duty to give her the chance to come back to country and brought through the criminal process.

He said: ‘We have a responsibility as she was groomed on our watch.

‘We have to take responsibility for young girl’s who were groomed and influenced on our watch.’

Ms Begum, then aged 15, was one of three schoolgirls – along with Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase – from Bethnal Green Academy who left their homes and families in February 2015 to join a fourth Bethnal Green schoolgirl, Sharmeena Begum, who had left London in 2014, in Syria.

In February, Ms Begum was found by The Times, nine months pregnant, at a refugee camp, telling the paper that she would ‘do anything required just to be able to come home’.

Ms Begum said she was married 10 days after arriving in Raqqa to a Dutchman who had converted to Islam, Yago Riedijk, who she claimed was later arrested, charged with spying and tortured.

She eventually left Raqqa in January 2017 with her husband but her children, a girl aged a year and nine months old and a three-month-old boy, both died.

Her third child, a son, also died shortly after he was born.

Riedijk, a 27-year-old jihadist from the Netherlands, has been placed on an exclusion list and is currently being held in a cell in northern Syria.

He has been banned from entering Britain because he poses a national security risk.

Riedijk was jailed for six years in his absence last year in his home country the Netherlands for membership of a terrorist organisation.

He has spoken about his love for his wife in an interview with The Times. He said: ‘We got very close very quickly. The perfect wife. She was so young and innocent’.

Ms Begum told The Times she had ‘mostly’ lived a ‘normal life in Raqqa, every now and then bombing and stuff’.

She added: ‘But when I saw my first severed head in a bin it didn’t faze me at all. It was from a captured fighter seized on the battlefield, an enemy of Islam. I thought only of what he would have done to a Muslim woman if he had the chance.’

The Home Office revoked her British citizenship later in February – a decision which is only lawful if it did not leave Ms Begum stateless.

It was speculated at the time that Ms Begum may have Bangladeshi citizenship, but Bangladesh’s minister of state for foreign affairs Shahriar Alam has denied this.

Home Secretary Priti Patel told The Sun last month that Ms Begum would not be able to return to the UK, telling the paper: ‘Our job is to keep our country safe.

‘We don’t need people who have done harm and left our country to be part of a death cult and to perpetrate that ideology.

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

‘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 IS in this country.’

Last month Begum begged to come back to the UK to get therapy after saying she now hates the Islamic State (IS).

Since being part of IS she says she has given birth to three children, all of whom died from disease or malnutrition.

Ms Patel responded to her plea by simply saying: ‘No way, no way.’

Begum, who is now living in an internment centre in Syria, said: ‘My mental health situation is not the best.

‘My physical health is OK. I am still young and I do not get sick. That is not my problem. Mentally, though, I am in a really bad way. I need therapy to deal with my grief. It is so hard. I have lost all my children.

‘None of the people I am living with in here know what I have experienced. They are not like my school friends who I could always talk to. They do not understand what I have been through.

‘There is no mental health provision. I have heard that in other camps there is psychiatric help, but not here.’

MailOnline has contacted the Home Office, the Foreign Office and Begum’s lawyer.

Source: Daily Mail