Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

‘Treason bill will allow terror suspects to be tried in the UK’

MPs debate Prevent merits as Shamima Begum case makes headlines

‘Treason bill will allow terror suspects to be tried in the UK’

FORMER home secretary Priti Patel has reiterated her stance that Shamima Begum remains a “threat to our country” as she hit back at suggestions that the UK has become an “outlier” to its western allies over its stance to not allow the former Daesh member to return to the country.

Begum, 23, who travelled to Syria from London in 2015 to join the terror group, was stripped of her British citizenship in 2019 on national security grounds by then home secretary Sajid Javid.


Last Wednesday (22), the Special Immigration Appeals Commission dismissed her latest appeal against the government’s decision.

Former lead commissioner of the Commission for Countering Extremism, Dame Sara Khan, said the UK was risking “creating the next generation of jihadists” by leaving the likes Begum in refugee and detention camps abroad.

LEAD Prevent Dame Sara Khan Dame Sara Khan

“The reality is that we have to grapple with as a country is that we have become an outlier in contrast to other Western nations. The US has taken back its citizens, we know that Germany, France, and many other European nationals have taken back their citizens,” Khan said during a panel discussion on counter-terrorism hosted by the Policy Exchange in London on Monday (27).

“There is a particular issue to be raised about women and children who are in these squalid camps. One of the concerns now is for those people who are in those camps, particularly the children, we are just ending up creating the next generation of jihadists, and so I don’t think we can just wash our hands off and ignore that situation.”

She added: “If we can bring them back, we can have much greater control over the situation.”

However, Patel, who was also on the Policy Exchange event panel, was robust in her response to Khan, saying the UK’s first responsibility was to protect its citizens.

“We are an outlier, but we are an outlier for good reason, and those reasons include the threat to our own citizens and the threat to our country,” she said.

Patel, who served as home secretary between 2019 and 2022, said she had insight into cases such as Begum’s, adding; “I’ve not just read the files, but actually been involved in operational work around everything to do with individuals such as herself and others not in our country.

“I have seen the work our agencies do 24/7 effectively to keep our country safe. So as much as it may be uncomfortable for some, as long as someone is a threat to our country and to a threat to our citizens, I think it’s right that they are not brought back. I believe we have to do everything we can to protect our country.”

The former home secretary added: “The type of resources we’d have to put into an individual of that nature are absolutely phenomenal. These decisions cannot be taken lightly. I think the court has taken the right course of action.”

Begum is reportedly one of an estimated 60 British women and children held by Kurdish authorities in Syria who have no means of leaving without the UK government’s co-operation.

Patel highlighted that in the case of Begum, she had dual-nationality, with ‘heritage elsewhere’ implying Begum could look for assistance from the Bangladesh government where her parents are originally from.

However, the Bangladesh government said in 2019 that they have “nothing to do with Shamima Begum as she is British”.

LEAD Khalid Mahmood MP Khalid Mahmood MP

Another panellist, Labour MP Khalid Mahmood, and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Tackling Terrorism, revealed that he and Tom Tugendhat, the minister of state for security, are working on amending the treason law which would make it easier to bring the likes of Begum back to the UK.

“Both Tom Tugendhat and I have done a quite a significant report on legalising treason properly and going through the new legislation to produce that,” said Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham.

“This would actually resolve the issues like this, where we have people who’ve gone out there, who fought against our military personnel and we just leave them there. The problem with that is that all the intelligence they have, we lose.

“The other issue is that if we bring them back, we can’t really prosecute them because we don’t have sufficient information on what they’ve been doing.

“But the treason bill would do that. You bring them back here, let the intelligence services deal with it and you incarcerate them, depending on the judgment given on that particular individual.”

Of the 900 Britons estimated to have travelled to fight with Daesh, around 40 per cent have already returned, 20 per cent are thought to have died and the remainder, around 360, are still in the Middle East. Government officials said those who have returned will have their movements restricted and be enrolled in mandatory deradicalisation programmes if they can not be prosecuted for terrorism offences.

Khan, however, criticised the government’s counter-terrorism programme, Prevent, saying that she had “no confidence” in it stopping people from being radicalised.

She voiced her concerns over the failure to tackle ‘non-violent extremists’ such as Islamist hate preacher Anjem Choudhury who was free to air his controversial views in public in the guise that he wasn’t outright calling for violence.

“In the past 15 years or so, we have systematically failed to tackle the non-violent extremists threat,” she said.

“During my time at the commission, all the evidence I saw was that in this last decade in particular, the threat of extremism has worsened.”

Khan added: “I think it’s a fundamental mistake to think Prevent is the right mechanism to tackle non-violent extremism. If they’ve not managed to do it in the past 15 years or so, what confidence do I have that Prevent is now suddenly going to be able to do it?

“We know that in the last couple of years, almost half of the terrorist acts of that have taken place in this country had been referred to Prevent. The inability to actually stop those people has been a failure from the Prevent side,” she said.

The terrorist, Al-Harbi Ali, a 25-year-old British citizen of Somali heritage, who murdered Sir David Amess MP had been referred to the Prevent programme several years earlier, but then plotted his attack in secret.

“Prevent is always going to struggle with dealing with extremist groups that sit below the terrorism threshold, and we have seen this for years, because what these extremist groups are doing are not calling for violence and terrorism.”

Khan urged the government to review its laws, looking into the gaps around hateful extremist activity where extremist groups don’t cross over to a threshold of terrorism, but are still radicalising individuals.

“These groups might not be engaged in terrorism, but are they creating a climate that’s conducive to it? Yes. Are they undermining social cohesion? Yes. Are they engaged in acts of extremism and subversion? Yes.

“Ultimately, one of the things that they are doing, which I showed across all of the groups, whether it’s far right extremists, Islamist extremists, or any other extremist groups, was that these groups were ultimately seeking to undermine the fundamental and democratic rights and freedoms of our society.

“We need to relook at the laws around non-violent extremism.

“We need to identify that there are gaps in legislation, and we need a distinct legal operational infrastructure to deal with this problem. Over the past 15 years, we’ve just not been able to fix this problem through the lens of Prevent and you cannot fix this problem through the lens of terrorism, counter terrorism or Prevent because we are not talking about a terrorism problem,” she said.

More For You

Russell brand

Sexual offences said to have taken place between 1999 and 2005

Getty

Russell Brand faces rape and sexual assault charges involving 4 women

Russell Brand has been formally charged with a series of sexual offences said to have taken place between 1999 and 2005. The comedian and actor faces allegations from four separate women, with the charges including rape, indecent assault, oral rape and further counts of sexual assault.

The Metropolitan Police confirmed on Friday that Brand has been informed of the charges. A statement from the force said he is to be charged with one count of rape in the Bournemouth area in 1999, one count of indecent assault in Westminster in 2001, one count of oral rape and an additional sexual assault in Westminster in 2004, and a further count of sexual assault in Westminster between 2004 and 2005.

Keep ReadingShow less
indian-parliament

In the Rajya Sabha, 128 members voted in favour, and 95 opposed it. In the Lok Sabha, 288 MPs supported the bill, while 232 voted against it.

Gatty images

Indian parliament passes the controversial Waqf (Amendment) Bill

INDIAN parliament has passed a controversial bill seeking to change the way Muslim charitable properties, known as waqf, are managed.

The bill was cleared after hours of heated debate, with the government saying it would bring transparency and the opposition alleging that it targets the Muslim community.

Keep ReadingShow less
Blood donor recruitment event for South Asian community

FILE PHOTO: A nurse prepares a man for a blood donation in London, England. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

Blood donor recruitment event for South Asian community

THE NHS is holding a blood donor recruitment event at Shepherd's Bush blood donor centre on Saturday (5) to attract South Asian donors to help treat health conditions affecting their community.

South Asian donors are needed to treat thalassemia, an inherited blood disorder which affects people of Mediterranean, south Asian, southeast Asian and Middle Eastern origin. People with thalassemia produce too little or no haemoglobin, causing anaemia, fatigue, breathing issues and other symptoms.

Keep ReadingShow less
Modi Yunus

The meeting took place on the sidelines of a regional summit in Thailand. (Photo: X/@ChiefAdviserGoB)

Modi meets Yunus for first talks since Hasina's exit

INDIAN prime minister Narendra Modi held talks with Bangladesh's interim leader Muhammad Yunus in Bangkok on Friday.

This was their first meeting since former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina was removed from office in 2024.

Keep ReadingShow less
US tourist arrested for entering North Sentinel Island

Authorities continue to investigate Polyakov’s actions

Youtube/ Neo-Orientalist

US tourist arrested for entering North Sentinel Island, home to Andaman tribe with no outside contact

Indian police have arrested a 24-year-old American tourist, Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, for illegally entering North Sentinel Island, one of the most protected and isolated regions in the world. The remote island, part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, is home to the Sentinelese tribe, who reject all contact with outsiders and are safeguarded by Indian law.

Polyakov reportedly attempted to make contact with the Sentinelese by offering a coconut and a can of Diet Coke. He used a motorised inflatable boat to reach North Sentinel Island, where he spent a few minutes onshore before returning to his vessel. Authorities confirmed that he collected sand samples and filmed his brief landing using a GoPro camera.

Keep ReadingShow less