ISIS teenager wants to come home

[dudalb]

One of the problems we are having (at least in Canada) is actually making a legal case against them... We can claim they are guilty of treason, or "aiding a terrorist organization" (or whatever the charge is), but how do you make the case? Its doubtful ISIS was keeping accurate census records, and trying to interview eye-witnesses in a hostile territory is difficult. Anyone who returns can just claim "I was backpacking in Europe for a couple of years and lost my passport".

God knows I do not want to sound like Trump,but you have a genuine security issue also. I hope if she comes back and is not charged she is kept under very tight police surveillance. She volunatary joined the most murderous Terrorist organization in the world, for heaven's sake.

 

[dudalb]

It transpires that the father of one of the girls took part in a flag burning exercise by one of the hate preachers. He has to take some responsibility for his daughter's inculcation with radicalism.

This Shamima Begum woman, although she sounds vile, was just fifteen when she was caught up in idealistic fervour. She has become detached from reality, living as she has for four years in a rabid fanatical environment (rather like people rescued from brainwashing cults). She likely feels cognitive dissonance in feelings of comradeship on the one hand with her fellow 'fighters' and her desire to give her unborn child a better life by returning to the UK.

Perhaps the UK should turn the other cheek, show compassion (for the innocent baby, at least) and demonstrate to the deluded zealots how Christianity works.

Love thine enemy, not behead them.

By that reasoning, no criminal should ever be punished for any crime.
I have to wonder if you are being serious here.
And you could apply the whole wraped up in a rabid fananticail enviorment statement to the Nazi guards who ran the gas chambers as Auschwitz. It might be an explanation, but it's not an excuse.

 

[Vixen]

By that reasoning, no criminal should ever be punished for any crime.
I have to wonder if you are being serious here.
And you could apply the whole wraped up in a rabid fananticail enviorment statement to the Nazi guards who ran the gas chambers as Auschwitz. It might be an explanation, but it's not an excuse.

She should be subject to due process of course.

We should also fight bad ideology with a good one.

Otherwise she is not going to change.

 

[theprestige]

She's incriminated herself enough for a number of charges to stick, certainly enough to get her life in jail, and the intelligence services will have her communications from before she went. The problem is, if she does return, she won't get life because of 'sentencing guidelines' relating to her age and 'vulnerability'.

I'm okay with all of this.

 

[Segnosaur]

Anyone who returns can just claim "I was backpacking in Europe for a couple of years and lost my passport".

I'm not sure I see the problem. It's customary for the state to not make a case against someone who has an alibi.

The problem is, the returning ISIS people don't actually have an alibi... at least not a verified one.

So, you're potentially introducing a large number of individuals who (at one point anyways) were hostile to the ideals of their home nation with no punishment for any illegal actions that they have done and little ability to track their activities upon returning.

Wrongdoers go free all the time because the state can't gather enough evidence to convict - or even prosecute. This is generally considered to be a feature, not a bug, of the system.

Yes, innocent until proven guilty and all that... Yes, its the preferred way that we should want the legal system to function. Still doesn't mean that we shouldn't be worried about potential side effects of that policy.

 

[Segnosaur]

One of the problems we are having (at least in Canada) is actually making a legal case against them...

She's incriminated herself enough for a number of charges to stick, certainly enough to get her life in jail...

I agree that in this case (and many others) they have enough evidence to make the charges stick. But its not that way for everyone.

and the intelligence services will have her communications from before she went.

Maybe they will (at least in this case). But like I said, not every case is the same. Not everyone leaves the same digital footprint behind.

 

[IanS]

One of the problems we are having (at least in Canada) is actually making a legal case against them... We can claim they are guilty of treason, or "aiding a terrorist organization" (or whatever the charge is), but how do you make the case? Its doubtful ISIS was keeping accurate census records, and trying to interview eye-witnesses in a hostile territory is difficult. Anyone who returns can just claim "I was backpacking in Europe for a couple of years and lost my passport".

In this UK case the woman (Shamima Begum) has admitted her deliberate and intentional part in joining IS specifically to fight a jihadist war. And just the few quotes that I gave above from her interview with the Times journalist, show beyond doubt that she knew what she was doing, knew why she was doing it, and that even now she still thinks it was and is the best & most correct thing to do (she is still supporting IS attempts to form a religious caliphate by jihadist war) ...

... if she is charged in the UK with terrorist offences (and afaik there's a long list of things she'd probably be charged with), then her admissions to the journalist (where she knew who she was talking to, and knew that it would all be published for people to read in Times newspaper), are really undeniable in any trial.

This is not like the many other cases where a person returning from IS in Syria (or wherever), is arrested at a UK airport, and where they immediately maintain their innocence. That actually did happen in the case of another UK Muslim woman Tareena Shakil who was arrested on her return to the UK after a year with IS in Syria (2014 to 2015), but in her case she protested her innocence and told a story about how she was actually trying to escape from IS … but in court it was shown that her escape story was untrue. She was found guilty and sentenced to 6 years in prison. When she left to join IS in Syria she also took her 14 month old son ... she had posed him in photos wearing an IS inscribed wooly hat and with an AK47 alongside him ... it was shown in court that her intention was to ensure that he was raised to grow up as an IS fighter).

 

[p0lka]

Rescue the girl, abort the fetus, put her on trial.

chop her head off, put it in a bin and see how she likes it.

 

[theprestige]

The problem is, the returning ISIS people don't actually have an alibi... at least not a verified one.

They also don't have solid incriminating evidence against them. Again, in our system of criminal justice, this is fine.

So, you're potentially introducing a large number of individuals who (at one point anyways) were hostile to the ideals of their home nation with no punishment for any illegal actions that they have done and little ability to track their activities upon returning.

Our society has a large number of such individuals running around at all times anyway.

I think we would all be overjoyed if you could solve the problem of the murderer who walked away free because we couldn't find enough evidence to convict him. If for no other reason than that we could apply the same solution to the problem of the terrorist soldier who goes free for lack of evidence.

Yes, innocent until proven guilty and all that... Yes, its the preferred way that we should want the legal system to function. Still doesn't mean that we shouldn't be worried about potential side effects of that policy.

To be honest, I'm more worried about the side effects of the countervailing policy. See: Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the no-fly list, etc.

 

[baron]

Our society has a large number of such individuals running around at all times anyway.

All the more reason not to import more, or to cage them if that's not an option. The resources to monitor a single person 24/7 are staggering - 20 to 30 security agents costing millions a year for one individual (the free housing and benefits given to the terrorist and her family pale into insignificance compared to this this cost). The UK harbours between 500 and 1000 known violent extremists (I hate that word) and around 23,000 more known terrorist supporters and viable terrorist risks. Our security services have the resource to monitor only a few dozen of these round the clock at any one time. It only takes one to cause carnage, as we've seen so often. The problem here is not insufficient evidence to convict, nor is it inadequate legislation, it's soft sentencing guidelines.

 

[IanS]

One other rather unexpected thing Shamima Begun said in that interview, is that she now wants to return to the UK and she says “I will do anything required just to come home and live quietly with my child”. She appears not to realise that she is likely to be arrested and that she probably will not be simply left to “live quietly with my child” as if nothing wrong had ever happened.

I don't want to be unkind to this woman. And I'd always prefer to see compassion and tolerance shown by the UK security services. But there have been several hundred UK Muslims who have now returned to the UK after fighting with IS or silmilar groups abroad, and apart from the fact that it seems like a large number of those have now gone missing and are untraceable within the UK, afaik most of the rest have all had to be kept under constant surveillance as a security risk … i.e., these are dangerous people (some of them, very dangerous indeed), and I'm not sure how the UK security services could exclude Miss Begum from that “dangeorus” group.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

If that kid survives, it's almost certain to become a terrorist to some degree.
Enlightened self-interest suggests that the world is safer when more people get some education instead of growing up in terrorist-controlled refugee camps.

That does not explain "can't support the war", but whatever.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Rescue the girl, abort the fetus, put her on trial.

Abort a full term fetus?

 

[theprestige]

Abort a full term fetus? : rolleyes :

Good point. Probably easier to let her give birth, and then just bin it.

 

[Parsman]

It transpires that the father of one of the girls took part in a flag burning exercise by one of the hate preachers. He has to take some responsibility for his daughter's inculcation with radicalism.

This Shamima Begum woman, although she sounds vile, was just fifteen when she was caught up in idealistic fervour. She has become detached from reality, living as she has for four years in a rabid fanatical environment (rather like people rescued from brainwashing cults). She likely feels cognitive dissonance in feelings of comradeship on the one hand with her fellow 'fighters' and her desire to give her unborn child a better life by returning to the UK.

Perhaps the UK should turn the other cheek, show compassion (for the innocent baby, at least) and demonstrate to the deluded zealots how Christianity works.

Love thine enemy, not behead them.

Not Christianity. Western secular values. Despite the oddity that has CoE Bishops in one house of our legislature the UK is a very secular country, far more so than the USA seems to be.

 

[baron]

Her father is quoted as saying, "'They were manipulated by evil people and they should be brought home and helped. Not punished."

He's correct, they were manipulated by evil people, and he is one of them - the main one, in fact. He took her along to hear Anjem Choudary speak (Choudary is an open supporter of ISIS and is associated with practically every convicted Islamic terrorist in the UK) and was integral in making her what she is today.

What in the name of Christ are these people even doing in the UK? It boggles the mind.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Seems she wanted to join ISIS, regardless of the consequences.

Now she seems to want to join the ordinary society.

Let her do it, regardless of consequences.

Hans

 

[Childlike Empress]

Folks, again, she didn't decide to leave ISIS because of her pregnancy or anything else. She HAD TO flee the daily bombardment of the few villages (now only a few street corners) the cult's territory has been reduced to. Now she is in a refugee camp controlled by Kurdish fighters, the ground forces of the "US-led coalition" that does the bombing. They have a busy schedule awaiting a possible Turkish invasion. Why should they shoulder the burden of taking care for these people (or "getting rid of them" somehow)? They have to return to the societies that produced them.

 

[theprestige]

Why should they take the burden to care for these people? They have to return to the societies that produced them.

I understand the remnants of ISIS-held territory are right nearby.

 

[Childlike Empress]

I understand the remnants of ISIS-held territory are right nearby.

What? Look at the map I posted earlier. The remaining people in that 1 km² will soon surrender or die in the creation of a nice parking lot at the Euphrates shores. There is no returning, as there is no Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham anymore.