O/T Shemima Begum - Legal Aid

It will be called out... On here by me and you and others, on facebook and Twitter, in the Guardian and the Independent, there'll be demonstrations outside the court, the opposition benches will make a bunch of noise.
And for most of the media - that doesn't matter one iota.

The times we live in...
3 judges stood up for the rule of law, to ensure that our prime minister didn't just wave through an act of parliament to start the process of leaving the EU. They stood up to support the sovereignty of parliament - the very parliamentary democracy that so much debate has centred around over the last 4 years. And how were those fine legal minds, senior judges portrayed in our popular media? As traitors to the country!

This isn't the time to be right - it's much more important to be seen to be right, it possibly always was - but I'm just getting old / becoming more cynical / accepting that the world is crap.

 

Well I’m not overly good at maths. Useless at miracles. My politics isn’t as liberal progressive as some, I lack the subtle nuances of others.

I’ve even got what was it.? A murderous brain.

So where are we ?

we’ve got a situation where tax payers money is going to challenge a ruling by the current Home Secretary that a young woman has had her citizenship revoked.

Where do you start?

The first question has to be what came to her being in this situation in the first place.

Simple answer is religious indoctrination towards a highly conservative understanding of Islam. This will have come from a combination of sources, the biggest influences being her direct family and her local mosques and religious schools with later down the line online influencers which are hardly difficult to find.

The argument being, was she brainwashed and groomed or did she understand what she was getting herself into?

It’s highly likely she was brainwashed into championing that specific ideology and its beliefs along with her co travellers.

Did she understand what she was doing and it’s consequences? That’s the argument in a nutshell.

No matter how sympathetic I try to be to the situation, I’d go for her having a good understanding of what she was doing. It’s been quite apparent for the last ten years plus what Isis stood for in terms of religious and political viewpoints and how they enforce the same in the Caliphate as it was.

The same would have been part of several curriculums within the reglious schools (most of which are unregulated or monitored in their teachings and funding) which along with a number of Mosques will have and continue to be recruiting grounds for the future soldiers ...

This will have been reinforced by online sources, YouTube, social media, recruiters selling the ideology, selling the dream of an Islamic paradise.

The consequences would have been well known. Regardless. She would have known that IS is a prescribed terrorist organisation and that she would face a possible custodial sentence for joining the same.

The fact that she and two others managed to buy air tickets to Turkey and get into IS badlands suggests that they had a modicum of intelligence between them and backing financially to do the same.

The second question being, what did she do while she was there?

It’s well established that she married a convicted terrorist and gave birth to and lost three children.

What is more cloudy is to what extent was she involved in the the atrocities.

So far, she has been linked with by a number of sources from the red top press through to those on the ground to:

The massacre of the Yazidi population
Dressing up women ready to be raped by their husbands
Creating suicide vests for those lucky enough to be selected to get blown up

Along with being present at multiple executions and massacres of those who spoke out Caliphate or the leadership of the same.

As for being a refugee, only in the loosest of terms. The camp she is in, all the brides of Isis are kept separate from the main population, she’s kept further away from these as they see her as a ‘grass’.

Technically she’s being held prisoner with her husband held in a actual prison.

So what happens next?

Well the first aspect to look at is why does she want to return to the UK. There’s a number of arguments as to why.

The first being to save her own skin. The Kurdish, Syrian and Iraqi governments seem to be fond of eye for an eye.

Second she’s had a realisation that the grass isn’t greener and wants home to mummy.

She also knows that she will get a heroic welcome throughout parts of the UK.

Given this she’ll never have to work, mostly because she is unemployable and secondly donations will come in from patrons.

You also have to consider has she shown any regret for her actions. Based on what I’ve seen in her interviews. Very little other than sound bites and false sincerity.

Does she possess a threat to national security. Absolutely. Regardless of religious beliefs age or nationality she should be refused the right to return to the UK along with every other shithouse who went to Syria. Anyone who poses a threat to national security loses the right to live here as far as I am concerned. For the many not the few.

Does she deserve a fair trial. Yes, that is one of the things that separate us from the nutjobs in civilised societies.

But not until she has faced justice in Syria given that’s where she has committed these alleged crimes. If they don’t have her swinging from a rope let Her come back to the UK.

Should she get legal aid. That’s the law, as much as it might be morally wrong in terms of money being spent to defend the rights of someone who is part of a organisation that wishes the UK harm she has the right to representation.

What has espcaed notice again is the bigger picture...

There’s a lot of noise about right wing extremists. Yet from a majority white Christian country only about a 5th of terror related convictions are linked to right wing extremism.

The rest. Well they aren’t left wing!

There’s around 150 different organisations based around the world that want to exterminate Christians and/Jews all following similar religious doctrines.

There is depending on your source somewhere between 23 and 30 thousand people on the terror watch lists.

As for the Bradford analogy. You forgot Rotherham, Rochdale,Oxford, Telford, Derby amongst others where the authority’s suggested for many years the systematic grooming and raping of young girls was er their fault and subsequently covered it up.

 

Because they (lawyers just for clarity) see nothing but pound signs.

 

I would not deny her legal aid.

But I would hope that ideas of "brainwashing" form no part of any defence. That's minor mitigation at best.

She may be better running a defence of some sort of incapacity. She seems slightly unhinged to me.

 

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php...aged-in-a-covert-operation-to-overthrow-assad

Worth a read , operation timber sycamore and the UK s involvement . Ironic that UK tax payers money , along with the US / Saudi alliance inadvertently fed the whole Isis beast . This whole debacle is like deposing gadaffi in the name of democracy , then complaining about immigration from northern Africa .

 

I think the almost surreal nature of British citizens going off to join a fighting force in the Middle East, then coming back into Europe and Britain, is so concerning that it almost feels natural to suggest decisive punishments that aren't necessarily covered by law or at least 'bend' the usual process. But that does set a dangerous precedent where if a crime is deemed bad enough, do we move away from a fair trial, irrespective of how distasteful the criminal in question is? I struggle to see how we could not follow our laws as a civilised country, whilst acknowledging the understandable strength of feeling against certain people.

I cannot agree with the comparison with the poor victims of the sickening sexual grooming gangs however, almost as if she deserved the same victim status. All may have been 'groomed' by an interpretation of the word, but the difference between young girls being drugged and raped and another girl going off to fight in a war is so big it's untrue.

 

Any belief in religion is grounds for incapacity in my opinion. Its f**king horrific.

 

Unbelievable ******** on this thread. Regardless of what we think of this person and her actions
A Do we follow our own law and due process or
B Ignore our law, and just because we don't like her anyway get her banged up or executed.
I suspect most knee jerk folk would go for B but people with brain cells will go A.

 

You're right, it's nothing like it in the sense that what happened to Begum was far worse. Only you want to ignore the brainwashing, rape and grooming and blame it on a 16 year old child because it fits your viewpoint.

She was a 16 year old kid, do you really think she really formed a coherent geo-political viewpoint about the promise of an Islamic Caphiliate and how it would be enabled via her joining a war to murder fellow Muslims in Syria on her own back? Or was it via the scourge of what most on here would condemn, that is ISIS propaganda aimed vulnerable Muslims in the UK?

 

Odd that you choose to (rightly) use the word "sickening" for girls groomed in Bradford for sex, yet for another girl groomed for sex in a Syrian war zone you manage abject indifference. 3 dead kids and all.

If I argued those girls in Bradford knew what sex and drugs were all about so I had little sympathy for them, you'd rightly think I was mad in the head. Yet if the results of online grooming of a vulnerable person by ISIS (something the government and media have consistently warned about) has a *worse* outcome, then all bets are off and its their own fault.

Again, she was groomed *as a child*.

 

ISIS came about as a result of the invasion of Iraq. Those who warned (myself included) that it would lead to the spread of terrorism here and in the region were consistently told we were 'left wing Saddam sympathisers who *Insert insults here*

I'm still waiting for Tony Blair to face trial for his crime of aggression. It's he who should be facing justice for getting young kids like this involved.

 

I'm still waiting for Tony Blair to face trial for his crime of aggression. It's he who should be facing justice for getting young kids like this involved.[/QUOTE]

Good luck with that, I fear you will be waiting a long time.

 

Said before and will say again, irrelevant of what she has or has not done and how it came about, at the very least she should have been allowed to return and then investigated in an appropriate manner within the laws of the land. If that led to her being imprisoned, sectioned or even deported I would support that.

But nobody should be supporting stepping away from the basic laws of the land in any circumstances.

 

Why the obsession with 'online grooming'

Her route to the Caliphate started at home,at the mosque, at the religious schools from a very young age.

Whys that never mentioned? Why is it always assumed its some bloke sat far away doing the recruiting....

 

And if it is, then surely it is better to bring her back and question her to find out who is doing the recruiting, arresting them and making them face prison for their crimes?

 

So she was groomed twice, once at a local mosque, then again by Jihadis online. This doesn't do your line of reasoning any favours. From Wikipedia (note she went to a regular school, not a religious one). It seems a pretty tragic, note her Mum died of lung cancer a year before this happened and she ended up going to a local mosque, being radicalised by some idiots promising she'd meet her again in paradise before she was additionally groomed online.

From another article (my bold),

 

Because there’s a billion Muslims, who all live at home and visit mosques?
There aren’t a billion terrorists, or even terrorist sympathisers.

 

It's bizarre that those arguing for her punishment or not getting legal aid are happy to lay the blame at her door regardless of who and how many other groups took advantage of her. I'd go as far to say that they don't see the grooming (or want to see it) because she's a Muslim, although ironically it seems she was not very religious until her Mum died.

 

Good luck with that, I fear you will be waiting a long time.[/QUOTE]

Well yes.

 

It would help if you got the right Begum