Father’s comments contrast with other family members who ask the British Home Office for help so that Shamima’s newborn child can be raised in safety.
By World Israel News staff
The father of Shamima Begum has told The Mail on Sunday that he backs Home Secretary Sajid Javid’s decision to strip his daughter of her British citizenship.
Speaking to the media for the first time, Ahmed Ali, 60, said: ‘I know they [the British Government] don’t want to take her back, and in this, I don’t have a problem. I know she is stuck there [in Syria] but that’s because she has done actions that made her get stuck like this.”
Ali’s comments are in stark contrast to the pleas of Begum’s British-based relatives who want her to be allowed to return to the U.K.
“I am on the side of the Government,” he said. “I can’t say whether it is right or wrong, but if the law of the land says that it is correct to cancel her citizenship, then I agree.”
Her family in the U.K. wrote to the home secretary, asking for his help to bring Shamima’s newborn son to Britain.
Writing on behalf of the family, her sister Renu Begum said the baby boy was a “true innocent” who should not “lose the privilege of being raised in the safety of this country.”
The family said they have had no contact with Shamima and had only learned that she had given birth to a boy through media reports. They say that they were “shocked and appalled” at the “vile comments” that Shamima had recently made to the media.
Shamima was 15-years-old when she left east London in 2015 with two other schoolgirls on a flight from London to Turkey to join ISIS in Syria. In a recent interview, during her ninth month of pregnancy, she said that she had no regrets, but revealed that she wants to return home to the U.K. for the sake of the baby, fearing it could die in the camp where she has been living. Her two previous children have already died.
She gave birth to her new baby boy last Sunday. Despite her pleas to be allowed back to the U.K., she has drawn outrage by failing to apologize for joining the terror group and arguing that the 2017 bombing of the Manchester Arena by an Islamic extremist was justified.
In an earlier ITV interview, Security Minister Ben Wallace said that he could not “comment on this case exactly for legal reasons, [but] fundamentally it depends on her status as [a] British citizen, whether or not she has a passport,” adding that “if she is a British citizen, she has rights.”
On Tuesday, the British Home Office wrote to Begum’s parents, saying they had issued the order to revoke her citizenship that day. The move has created a controversy within the U.K. over whether the move is legal under international law.
The Mail on Sunday says that it tracked down Ali last week at his home in the Sunamganj region of northeast Bangladesh.
He insisted that his daughter had not shown any sign of being radicalized while at home.