Shamima Begum latest: It will take years before any ISIS bride can trusted, former Islamist extremist says

ISIS bride Shamima Begum wants to return to the UK
ITV

A former Islamist extremist has warned it will take years before any Islamic State bride allowed back to Britain can be trusted because of the potential danger they pose.

Aimen Dean, who was an early member of al-Qaeda before become a spy for MI5 and MI6, said there were “well documented cases” of IS women blowing themselves up with their children to kill others.

He also warned the large numbers of children born to IS parents currently languishing in refugee camps represented “a timebomb” that could spawn a new terrorist problem unless de-radicalisation was carried out.

Mr Dean’s comments, in a BBC interview, follow the disclosure that Shamima Begum’s family have written to Home Secretary Sajid Javid in an attempt to overturn his decision to strip her of her British citizenship.

The letter, written by Ms Begum’s sister Renu, says that the family is “shocked and appalled” by the “vile” comments that the former Bethal Green schoolgirl made during recent interviews but that they cannot abandon her.

“We have a duty to her, and a duty to hope that as she was groomed into what she has become, she can equally be helped back into the sister I knew, and daughter my parents bore,” the letter states.

It adds her fate will now be decided by the courts and also appeals to Mr Javid for help in bringing Ms Begum’s new born son, who is understood to retain his British citizenship, back to this country.

But Mr Dean said although he believed Britons who had gone to live or fight under the Islamic State should be returned, their presence in this country would pose a long term security threat.

“We can’t trust anyone who was in ISIS until years pass through their rehabilitation because there are well documented cases of ISIS women blowing themselves up alongside their own babies to kill security forces,” he said.

A long legal battle is expected before the courts decide whether the Home Secretary acted lawfully in removing Ms Begum’s citizenship.

His decision is understood to be based on the grounds that she also qualifies for Bangladeshi nationality through her parents - even though she has never been to the country. Bangladesh has insisted she is not one of its citizens and that it does not want her.

That has prompted claims that Mr Javid has acted unlawfully by making 19-year-old Ms Begum stateless - something he denies - and that he has left other Britons with foreign parents feeling there is a two-tier citizenship.

Those concerns were highlighted today by Nazir Afzal, a former chief crown prosecuctor, who said that “as irrational as it sounds” many people now “feel their citizenship is now conditional, where people are saying for the first time: am I really British?”.

On bringing IS supporters to justice, Mr Afzal added the ban on the use of intercept evidence in court and the challenges of gathering other material made prosecutions challenging, but that the difficulties were not insurmountable.

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