Leave smirking, lying Shamima Begum to fester in hellhole
I KNOW that Shamima Begum was only 15 when she ran away from home in East London’s Bethnal Green to join terror group IS in Syria.
And since then she has lost three babies to pneumonia and malnutrition.
But there my sympathy ends and my anger takes over.
Not only with her, but also with the BBC, which this week aired 90-minute documentary The Shamima Begum Story, giving this calculating woman a public platform to try to wheedle her way back into our country.
Shamima, who is now 23, is one of three East London schoolgirls who travelled to Syria in 2015 to support IS.
It made global headlines and she and her friends became known as the Bethnal Green Girls.
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Her lawyers say she should be allowed to return to the UK.
They claim she was a victim of trafficking by IS for the purpose of “sexual exploitation and marriage to an adult male”.
She was just a teenager when she went over to Syria and you could argue she didn’t know what she was doing.
But her actions when she got there prove she wasn’t just a silly, scared, young schoolgirl.
She quickly earned a reputation as a strict enforcer in IS’s “morality police” and recruited other young women to join the jihadist group.
She carried a Kalashnikov rifle and is alleged to have stitched suicide bombs into explosive vests so they could not be removed without detonating.
By February 2019, because she was pregnant with her third child, she fancied coming home to her family.
They asked the Government to step in and bring the IS bride home.
The problem was that she barely showed a shred of remorse, and in 2019 she was rightly stripped of her British citizenship on national security grounds.
Four years on she is at it again, in a legal battle with the Government to try to get her citizenship restored so she can return to London.
And thanks to the gullible BBC, paid for, let’s remember, by you and me, she has been able to tell her story, appealing for pity, all over again.
With sunglasses plonked on her head and a smirk fixed to her face, she clearly loved the attention.
She talked about how “exciting” it had been to travel to Syria and how she had been “in love” with IS and desperate to join.
Note: No suggestion of trafficking.
What she deserves
No suggestion of real remorse, either.
Shamima still refuses to accept responsibility for “other people’s actions”, saying terrorist acts by IS would have happened regardless of her journey.
But she does try to claim she feels shame and guilt about her actions.
Of course she does, she wants to get home.
So she pulls the “poor little me” act for the BBC.
I am not surprised she wants to come home, because she now lives at the al-Roj camp in northern Syria, run by the Syrian Democratic Forces.
She says it is worse than being in prison because there is no end date and she doesn’t know if she will ever leave.
Shamima’s story is shocking.
It is also sad.
And for any woman to be living in the horrendous camp conditions she is in is dreadful.
But it is what she deserves.
Throughout the documentary, which came just weeks after the Beeb’s ten- part podcast that “retraced” her story from London to Syria, Shamima told a pack of lies.
She claimed she did not know about beheadings before she went to Syria, despite previously admitting she did.
She denied she had IS training, although she was seen at a camp.
And she even claimed she had never witnessed a public execution, despite earlier admitting seeing severed heads in bins.
She should never have been given the opportunity to tell these lies in public.
The only good thing to come out of this BBC documentary is that it has proved, yet again, we cannot take the risk and allow this smirking terrorist back into our country.
'Proof' claims danger
SINCE Nicola Bulley disappeared so many super sleuths have headed to St Michael’s on Wyre that Lancashire Police issued dispersal orders to stop them traipsing around the village filming themselves, taking selfies and trespassing.
One of those who turned up there is Peter Faulding.
But he isn’t a wannabe detective, he’s a forensic search expert with specialised equipment who searched for April Jones in 2012 and tried to solve the mystery of the spy in a suitcase two years earlier.
He offered his services to Nicola’s family for free.
But instead of liasing discreetly with the cops he says he has “proof” she didn’t fall into the river – whereas the police say she did – and fears her phone may have been left on the bench by a third party to confuse investigators.
Faulding even said there needed to be a “wider land search” of outbuildings and sheds, which is when scores of amateur detectives descended on the village.
It is sad that what was I’m sure the act of a good samaritan has turned into what seems like a PR exercise to raise his own profile.
King's holey spirit
I’VE always loved the fact that, despite growing up in palaces and surrounded by riches, Charles has been the King of Thrift.
He has worn the same Barbour jacket for years and refuses to be a follower of fashion, so he can bring out the same outfits time and time again.
But when he visited an historic mosque on London’s Brick Lane this week it was clear he was wearing a sock with a hole in it.
It is commendable that he is keeping up with his frugal habits during a cost of living crisis but I really hope he sees fit to invest in a new pair before the Coronation.
Camilla, if you are reading this, M&S do a pretty good multi-pack for under a tenner.
I’d give outside undies the cold shoulder
WEARING a racy PVC bodysuit outside Harrods, Love Island’s Katie Salmon cheekily joked that she was “stopping London traffic”.
Looking like that, she’s lucky she didn’t cause a pile-up.
I can’t begrudge her wanting to show off that stunning figure but I did wonder how Katie was faring in the punishingly cold weather we’ve had of late.
I’m pretty sure that whatever I looked like in PVC undies, you’d find me bundled up inside a fleecy bathrobe, slippers on and clutching a nice cup of tea instead.
Bother 'N' baby
THERE’S not much that beats the joy of that baby scan when you learn if it is a boy or girl.
But not for all of us, it seems. Married At First Sight TV star Martha Kalifatidis this week told a radio show she was “devastated” to find out she was having a boy, not a girl.
She whinged: “I was so upset. It took me a few days to come to terms with it.”
Each to their own, but I cannot understand this fixation.
And how will that baby boy feel when he grows up and reads his mum was disappointed by him?
Here’s hoping she falls in love with her new addition when she meets him – and starts counting her blessings.
Quake help's vital
THE newborn baby pulled from the rubble in Syria while his remarkable mother lay dead underneath it reminds us all that, even during the most challenging and brutal times, the human spirit will endure.
It is very tempting to turn our heads in the other direction when we read about the hardship being experienced by the earthquake survivors in both Turkey and Syria who have been left homeless in the freezing temperatures.
But generous Sun readers have already raised nearly £1 million in funds for the Red Cross earthquake appeal.
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I hope we can all find it in our hearts to donate whatever we can to help, however little that might be.
It might just save a life.