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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsUK rejects Trump/Seb Gorka pressure to repatriate "Isis bride."
I'm glad they're standing firm against this ham-fisted bullying and attempt at intimidation.
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-david-lammy-reject-us-trump-gorka-call-repatriate-isis-bride-shamima-begum-syria/
"Shamima Begum, who left the U.K. to join ISIS while at school, will not be allowed to leave Syria and return to Britain, the governments top diplomat confirmed Thursday despite urging from Donald Trumps incoming team.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy was asked about Begums future after the U.S. president-elects pick for Senior Director for Counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka said the U.K. should repatriate British members of the Islamist terror group currently held in Syrian detention camps.
Any nation which wishes to be seen as a serious ally and friend of the most powerful nation in the world should act in a fashion that reflects that serious commitment, Gorka told the Times newspaper, stressing that this applied doubly so for the U.K.
Asked about Gorkas call, Lammy dismissed the possibility of Begum returning. Shamima Begum will not be coming back to the U.K. Its gone right through the courts. Shes not a U.K. national, he told ITV. We will act in our security interests. And many of those in those camps are dangerous, are radicals.
The foreign secretary added that any ISIS-linked Britons that did return from Syria would have to be, frankly, jailed as soon as they arrived.
muriel_volestrangler
(102,920 posts)I can't see it does anything for them, or even for the USA. Perhaps this is just "one more way to fuck with Starmer".
Begum is just a problem that the previous Tory government took the opportunity to wash their hands of (removing her British citizenship on the grounds that she could claim Bangladeshi citizenship from ancestry (she's never been there); but she didn't, and Bangladesh has now said "too late, she's not our problem either" ). If she was American-born, I would expect the Trump team to try the same thing to stop her getting back to the USA.