What do you think should happen to Shamima Begum and her kid?

[Barry Admin]

She's had a boy https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47270857

I've been thinking about this the last few days, and don't know what should be done. At what point do you decide someone isn't worth the risk of a second chance?

[touchingcloth]

Pop them both in grave, don't ask any questions?

[touchingcloth]

Or let them both go. Either or, I'm easy.

[Dex Sawash]

threads you were sure poo started

[a duncandisorderly]

council flat in wolverhampton & a new identity. anything less & we're lowering ourselves to their level.

[Bronzy]

council flat in wolverhampton & a new identity. anything less & we're lowering ourselves to their level.

Council flat in Sunderland and she'll be wanting to go back by the end of the week.

[hummingofevil]

I don't know, but if it was a 15 year old white girl who had been groomed on the internet, moved abroad to live in a shit hole, had three kids with the husband she was given after being groomed and two of them had died I think this story would have a very different feel to it.

I can't find it now but there was a good article a few months back about how rich, white men get immediately infantilised when they do wrong. Mark Zuckerberg is a man in his 30s with billions of dollars, wife and kids and mega corporation but when the Facebook privacy stuff came out people were falling over themselves to give him benefit of the doubt that he's "only young" and "can learn from his mistakes". See that swimmer rapist for another example.

This privilege is never afforded young women, even if they are literally children, and if anything its used actively against them as its the idea that for them to do bad things at such an age must be a sign of some intrinsic, fundamental evil.

---

I also wonder how many others have returned from ISIS without all of the media coverage.

I also wonder whether if she does return whether she should go to prison (probably) and have her child taken into care (maybe).

A very difficult issue.

[Ferris]

Repatriate when possible, then prosecute her under UK law. That seems fair enough, no? She's a citizen and has the right to repatriation, but there aren't consular staff available because she illegally traveled to a war-torn authoritarian terrorist state of her own volition. Not much anyone can do about that.

She wants to return because the caliphate has collapsed, not because she's seen the error of her ways which complicates matters. If the chaps in black were still decapitating tribesmen with Ka-Bar knives and drowning non-believers in cages, she'd have happily stayed and eluded justice. You can't give her a blank slate until she's been tried for what she's done. After she's served her sentence, then yeah fair enough she gets to start again.

Difficult case all round though, because there probably won't be any evidence of crimes (there tends not to be a lot of law enforcement forensic teams in a war zone) so there's a sizeable chance she will get off without any punishment at all.

There's a chap in Toronto right now who admitted to shooting and stabbing a couple of people in Syria as part of ISIL, but the government had no evidence so let him go. He could be on the subway with me tomorrow (in fact, he gets the subway regularly according to his interviews) and the only thing ISIL did wrong in his eyes was lose. I still don't know how I feel about that really. What if he decided to do something to a random unbeliever like me, like he did to those people near Raqqa? Or to my wife and son? Or someone else's wife or son? Yeah it's unlikely, but should I be forced to take the risk because the government didn't want to prosecute? Does his right to repatriation trump my right to safety, or vice versa, or what? I don't have an answer. I want to be liberal and civilized but this is complicated and leaves me with a lot of questions that I'm unsure about.

Tl;dr - It's all very complicated. Another stream of consciousness fuck it no one will read it all anyway post.

[Urinal Cake]

Take her back. Put her on trial. Put kids with relatives if found guilty.

After reading her wiki it seems if she was an attractive white girl she would get a lot more sympathy. Having your mother hide her cancer diagnosis as long as possible and die when you're 15 would fuck a lot of people up. Pity she didn't do it the appropriate way by drinking alcohol, taking drugs and being promiscuous.

What has fucked her is that she has stayed there for several years so it can't be seen as a sign of contrition.

[Alberon]

Of course she should be brought back. She clearly still believes in the cause and is only wanting to come back as she doesn't want her third kid to die like her other two, which is fair enough.

She'd probably need to be on a security services watchlist and her son raised by her relatives or put in care, but of course she should come back.

[Buelligan]

There's a chap in Toronto right now who admitted to shooting and stabbing a couple of people in Syria as part of ISIL, but the government had no evidence so let him go. He could be on the subway with me tomorrow (in fact, he gets the subway regularly according to his interviews) and the only thing ISIL did wrong in his eyes was lose. I still don't know how I feel about that really. What if he decided to do something to a random unbeliever like me, like he did to those people near Raqqa? Or to my wife and son? Or someone else's wife or son? Yeah it's unlikely, but should I be forced to take the risk because the government didn't want to prosecute? Does his right to repatriation trump my right to safety, or vice versa, or what? I don't have an answer. I want to be liberal and civilized but this is complicated and leaves me with a lot of questions that I'm unsure about.

I think this raises some interesting questions too.  What if this guy was "on the other side"?  What if he (or she) was in the army, had maybe done some pretty barbaric things at the state's behest and was now living with PTSD, homeless and untreated or cared for, on the streets of your cities (because he/she is), would this be a worry?

I think the girl was a victim.  She was a child.  Whatever she's become has been informed by what she was exposed to.  I think she needs help - as do all of the people living in the refugee camp where she currently is.  I think her baby obviously even more so.  If our world is so civilised how does it keep going to war and then leaving the victims (including army veterans) to pick up the pieces for themselves or die, not our problem.

And if we say, we can't afford to fix all of these problems, maybe we shouldn't be contributing enthusiastically to the circumstances that create them.  Maybe we shouldn't be selling weapons either.

[Pingers]

Pretty much what Buelligan said. If people are going to take the line of "she knew what she was getting into"  re: a 15 year old girl, then shouldn't they take the same line re: the girls who were exploited in Rotherham, Rochdale etc?

Which is not to say that 15 year olds don't have any responsibility for their decisions at all, but they are not adults. If she thinks she's keeping that kid if she returns to the UK she's deluded, mind. The state will have it off her, and quite rightly.

[biggytitbo]

Decitizening people  would be a worrying precedent to set regardless of what you think about this individual case. Australia has been down this road and exactly what people feared might happen has happened  and they're now wanting to use their new powers to unperson Australian citizens with 'extremist views', which is obviously not a category wide open for abuse at all.


She's ours I think we have to deal with her in this country. Also this whole story reeks of a pysop too, the massively disproprtionate amount of coverage its getting. Have II activated their clusters?

[Ferris]

Pretty much what Buelligan said. If people are going to take the line of "she knew what she was getting into"  re: a 15 year old girl, then shouldn't they take the same line re: the girls who were exploited in Rotherham, Rochdale etc?

Which is not to say that 15 year olds don't have any responsibility for their decisions at all, but they are not adults. If she thinks she's keeping that kid if she returns to the UK she's deluded, mind. The state will have it off her, and quite rightly.

I agree with all this (and Buelligan mostly, though I think the case of a combat veteran is slightly different ethically speaking, but still an interesting analogy). These are complex cases and the questions they raise don't have simple answers. I think we all agree that revoking citizenship is just not a route anyone would want to go down, but what happens if nothing can be proved? The state can't just take her kid away for no reason and without a prosecution they don't have due cause.

Hey, everyone - I'd recommend listening to the podcast Caliphate by the New York Times, which covers the Canadian who came back from Syria that I mentioned above. The journalist who presents it is great - she is funny and compelling and her research was so thorough and interesting I got a subscription to the NYT because I felt guilty getting it for free.

[idunnosomename]

I don't know I'd leave it to civil servants at the Home Office to weigh it up if and when she comes home

Because it's uh not my job to decide such things

[Pingers]

The state can't just take her kid away for no reason and without a prosecution they don't have due cause.

The state can remove the child if they think the risk of emotional abuse is high enough, which could include being brought up to hate all kuffars and not being allowed to play with the kuffar kids at school, plus there would be concerns around her taking the child to unsafe parts of the world.

[Buelligan]

I agree with all this (and Buelligan mostly, though I think the case of a combat veteran is slightly different ethically speaking, but still an interesting analogy).

Yeah, sorry, I'm in a hurry today and trying to be brief.  Not sure my observation was about ethics, more about perceived risk.  If we're going to worry about being on an underground train with people like this girl, we need to think about why.  What are the qualities or circumstances particular to her that make it worrying?  Because, I'd say, a lot of those criteria could, equally, be applied to those we anodynely refer to as "veterans".

[Pijlstaart]

I was in a similar boat and I escaped justice. I'd been binge-watching Oliver and Company and become radicalized, I grew to despise the UK, seeing it as an environment unconducive to the establishment of singing dog gangs. We needed to establish a new order, and I hid in the forest, trying to re-construct the world of Oliver and Company with the scarce resources I could find. I didn't have the technical know-how to realise my dream, the world-trade center logs kept prophetically falling over, and the urban jungle of manhattan never came to be. I had to focus on the fleeting Central Park scenes, extending and elaborating them, but in doing so, I lost the overall message of Oliver and Company, and I knew it. My followers had deserted me, and I had to play all the dog roles, even though I'd only ever wanted to be georgette. On most days I wouldn't even sing, I'd just lay on the forest floor and contemplate where it all went wrong. Eventually I resolved to go home, at first I thought I'd burned my bridges, having forwarded my Oliver and Company secession manifesto to the council, but they clearly hadn't acted on it. Similarly, the long vitriolic recruitment pamphlets I'd sent to vulnerable children of the 80s, those most receptive to my vision, led to no repercussions, and I was able to slink back into society.

I think many of us grow as people, and whilst I haven't, maybe others will.

[Funcrusher]

I don't know, but if it was a 15 year old white girl who had been groomed on the internet, moved abroad to live in a shit hole, had three kids with the husband she was given after being groomed and two of them had died I think this story would have a very different feel to it.

I can't find it now but there was a good article a few months back about how rich, white men get immediately infantilised when they do wrong. Mark Zuckerberg is a man in his 30s with billions of dollars, wife and kids and mega corporation but when the Facebook privacy stuff came out people were falling over themselves to give him benefit of the doubt that he's "only young" and "can learn from his mistakes". See that swimmer rapist for another example.

This privilege is never afforded young women, even if they are literally children, and if anything its used actively against them as its the idea that for them to do bad things at such an age must be a sign of some intrinsic, fundamental evil.

In what parallel universe is this the case? Young men who've joined ISIS and want to leave will be getting a much harder line. Examples of women, for example, getting more lenient prison sentences for criminal offences are numerous.

[Crisps?]

Not even sure what possible debate there is here. We'll allow Brits to be terrorists abroad (whether by actively enabling it or just not bothering to prevent it), then when they fail in their objectives and want to come home we'll deny any responsibility for them and expect innocent people in another country to suffer the risk from a foreigner that we won't accept ourselves from our fellow Brit?

Unless you're a believer in fascism, no government should be allowed to prevent someone returning to/living in their own land (aka dumping them on some other people's land) for any reason.

If she commits a crime in the UK, then prosecute her for it. The way it works for everyone else who isn't rich or connected.

[touchingcloth]

Maybe we shouldn't be selling weapons either.

I'm not. Who says I am? Those weapons were just resting in my account.

[lebowskibukowski]

I have had three customers in this morning who have all noticed her on the front page and have offered their opinions. So far it is two thirds for shooting her and the other third for hanging her. My money is on one of these winning out, unless there is a late surge for 'putting her in a giant trebuchet and firing her back at ISIS as a human missile'.

[hummingofevil]

In what parallel universe is this the case? Young men who've joined ISIS and want to leave will be getting a much harder line. Examples of women, for example, getting more lenient prison sentences for criminal offences are numerous.

This one.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/isis-british-jihadis-return-uk-iraq-syria-report-islamic-state-fighters-europe-threat-debate-terror-a8017811.html

400 ISIS fighters returned to UK as of October 2017. How many can you name? I'm struggling myself.

The women getting lighter prison sentences issue is a fascinating one but would suggest the massive elephant in the room on that one is the ridiculously disproportionate rate at which young black men get jailed.

[Large Noise]

[tag]Michael Caine enters thread to defend Jihadist[/tag]

[Replies From View]

Give them each one of those pudding bowl hairstyles.

[baptist]

Make her a panellist on Loose Women.

[Cuellar]

PM and Foreign Sec?

[im barry bethel]

Same as any 15yr old runaway

[Golden E. Pump]

Of course. This is an issue of education and rehabilitation. She should be evaluated and face justice if necessary. We need to identify the factors that caused her to defect in the first place so that we can prevent similar cases in the future. If we prevent her from returning it serves nobody any purpose, nobody learns anything and we remain two diametrically-opposed tribes waving our dicks across the hemispheres at one another.

[Chollis]

Lock her in the chokey