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Category / syria
AIWA! NO!
Wired on people, events and life; giving 'voice to the voiceless'.
Former home secretary Sajid Javid revoked the teenager’s citizenship in February.
Ms Begum, now 20, left the UK in 2015 and was found in a Syrian refugee camp in February after living under IS rule for more than three years.
Former home secretary Sajid Javid revoked the teenager’s citizenship later that month, prompting her family to take legal action against the Home Office in a bid to overturn the decision.
On Tuesday, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), a specialist court which hears challenges to decisions to remove someone’s British citizenship on national security grounds, will hold a four-day preliminary hearing in London.
Mrs Justice Elisabeth Laing is expected to deal with, among other things, whether depriving Ms Begum of her British citizenship rendered her stateless and was therefore unlawful.
Young members of the Druze community wave Syrian national flags during a rally in the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights on October 6, 2018 commemorating the 45th anniversary of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. / AFP PHOTO / JALAA MAREY
• READ MORE: IS bride Shamima Begum says she was ‘brainwashed’
Individuals appealing to SIAC usually remain anonymous, however it is understood that Ms Begum has waived her right to anonymity.
Ms Begum, then aged 15, was one of three schoolgirls – along with Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase – from Bethnal Green Academy who left their homes and families in February 2015 to join a fourth Bethnal Green schoolgirl, Sharmeena Begum, who had left London in 2014, in Syria.
In February, Ms Begum was found by The Times, nine months pregnant, at a refugee camp, telling the paper that she would “do anything required just to be able to come home”.
Ms Begum said she was married 10 days after arriving in Raqqa to a Dutchman who had converted to Islam, Yago Riedijk, who she claimed was later arrested, charged with spying and tortured.
She eventually left Raqqa in January 2017 with her husband but her children, a girl aged a year and nine months old and a three-month-old boy, both died.
• READ MORE: Jihadi bride Shamima Begum slams ‘unjust’ decision to revoke her citizenship
Her third child, a son, also died shortly after he was born.
Ms Begum told The Times she had “mostly” lived a “normal life in Raqqa, every now and then bombing and stuff”.
She added: “But when I saw my first severed head in a bin it didn’t faze me at all. It was from a captured fighter seized on the battlefield, an enemy of Islam. I thought only of what he would have done to a Muslim woman if he had the chance.”
The Home Office revoked her British citizenship later in February – a decision which is only lawful if it did not leave Ms Begum stateless.
It was speculated at the time that Ms Begum may have Bangladeshi citizenship, but Bangladesh’s minister of state for foreign affairs Shahriar Alam has denied this.
Home Secretary Priti Patel told The Sun last month that Ms Begum would not be able to return to the UK, telling the paper: “Our job is to keep our country safe.
“We don’t need people who have done harm and left our country to be part of a death cult and to perpetrate that ideology.
“We cannot have people who would do us harm allowed to enter our country – and that includes this woman.
“Everything I see in terms of security and intelligence, I am simply not willing to allow anybody who has been an active supporter or campaigner for IS in this country.”
Source: Zachary Stieber President Donald Trump explained the rationale behind his decision to pull all American troops from Syria, saying he wants the United States to “get out of these ridiculous endless wars.” The White House announced on Oct. 6 that American troops would pull out of northern Syria and hand over responsibility for captured […]
Israel Strikes Iranian Targets in Syria, Report Says; 16 Killed, 21 Wounded
Sixteen people including a baby were killed and 21 were wounded by an Israeli attack on multiple Syrian and Iranian targets on the outskirts of Damascus and Homs, Syrian state-run al-Ikhbariya broadcaster reported, citing its correspondent.
Israeli warplanes fired missiles at Syria that targeted Syrian military positions in Homs and Sahnaya, south of Damascus, the Syrian military said on Monday.
“The first assessment is that a Russian-made missile, part of the air defense system, which was part of the air defense system that took place last night in the face of an air strike against Syria, completed its range and fell into our country after it missed,” Turkish Cypriot Foreign Minister Kudret Ozersay said in a social media post.
The object hit a mountainside north of the capital Nicosia.
Syrian air defenses confronted the attack, which was launched from Lebanese airspace, the Syrian defense ministry said in a brief report on its Telegram feed.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 16 people were killed, among them three children and ten Iranian militias and Hezbollah members. The observatory added that the Israeli Navy also took part in the strike, targeting ten Hezbollah bases, including compounds that were used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
SANA said the dead included a baby and that other children were among the wounded in Sahnaya. It was unclear whether the civilians were killed in the strike or in the resulting blasts.
Social media pages affiliated with the Assad regime have been sharing posts saying a man named Anas Albiat and his wife Rama Arnaout. along with their infant son, were killed in the strike.
According to the observatory, among the sites hit were Revolutionary Guards’ compounds south of Damascus, a strategic research center northwest of Damascus, Hezbollah facilities near the Syrian-Lebanese border, where large fires were reported after several arms depots were hit.
In addition, a research center in Homs was reportedly struck, in addition to an airbase south of Homs that serves Iranian and Hezbollah forces.
The Israeli army has yet to comment on the incident.
Syrian state TV station al-Ikhbariya, citing its correspondent, said the pressure of explosions over Damascus had caused damage to some homes in Sahnaya, south of the capital, breaking glass and slightly injuring a number of people.
State news agency SANA cited its correspondent as saying Syrian air defenses had brought down a number of the missiles.
In recent years, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria that it says have targeted its regional arch foe, Iran, and the Lebanese Hezbollah group, which it calls the biggest threat to its borders.
Iran and Hezbollah are fighting on the side of President Bashar Assad in the Syrian war, and Israel says they are trying to turn Syria into a new front against Israelis.
On June 12, SANA reported that Syrian Air Defenses thwarted an Israeli attack on Tal al-Hara in southern Syria and shot down a number of missiles.
Located in Daraa Governorate, Tal al-Hara is considered as a strategic hill overlooking the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.
The missile attack resulted only in damage and Israel then conducted an “electronic war” in which radars were subjected to interference, SANA added.
Hours after the incident, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a message saying that Israel responds “decisively and forcibly to any attack against us,” yet did not claim responsibility for the alleged attack.
Earlier in June, Syrian state media said Israeli missiles were fired toward a Syrian military base in Homs, a day after Israel confirmed it had struck Syrian targets on Saturday in retaliation for rocket fire toward the Golan Heights.
In 2013, ISI began seizing territory in Syria and changed its name toIslamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis/Isil). The next year Isis overran large parts of Iraq, proclaimed its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as caliph, and became known as “Islamic State“.
This timeline chronicles the lightning rise, cruel reign and gradual fall of Islamic State.
* 2004-11 – In the chaos following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, an al Qaeda offshoot sets up there, changing its name in 2006 to Islamic State in Iraq.
* 2011 – After Syria’s crisis begins, the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi sends operatives there to set up a Syrian subsidiary. Baghdadi follows in 2013, breaking with al Qaeda and renaming his group “The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant”.
* 2014 – Its sudden success starts with the seizure of Fallujah in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria at the turn of the year. The jihadists take Mosul and Tikrit in June and overrun the border with Syria. At Mosul’s great Mosque, Baghdadi renames the group Islamic State (IS) and declares a caliphate.
So begins a reign of terror. In Iraq, IS slaughters thousands of Yazidis in Sinjar and forces more than 7,000 women and girls into sexual slavery. In Syria, it massacres hundreds of members of the Sheitaat tribe. IS beheads Western hostages in grotesquely choreographed films.
In September, the United States builds a coalition against IS and starts air strikes to stop its momentum, helping the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia turn the militants back from Kobani on the border with Turkey.
* 2015 – Militants in Paris attack a satirical newspaper and a kosher supermarket, the bloody start to a wave of attacks that IS claims around the world. Militants in Libya behead Christians and pledge allegiance to IS, followed by groups in other countries, but they stay operationally independent.
In May, IS takes Ramadi in Iraq and the ancient desert town of Palmyra in Syria, but by the end of the year it is on the back foot in both countries.
* 2016 – Iraq takes back Fallujah in June, the first town IS had captured during its initial blaze of success. In August, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), spearheaded by the Kurdish YPG, takes Manbij in Syria.
Alarmed by the Kurdish advances near its own frontier, Turkey launches an offensive into Syria against both IS and the YPG. Enmity between Turkey and the YPG will continue to complicate operations against IS.
* 2017 – Islamic State suffers a year of catastrophic defeats. In June it loses Mosul to Iraqi forces after months of fighting and Baghdad declares the end of the caliphate. In September the Syrian army races eastwards backed by Russia and Iran to relieve Deir al-Zor and re-extend state control at the Euphrates River. In October, the SDF drives IS from Raqqa.
* 2018 – The Syrian government retakes IS enclaves in Yarmouk, south of Damascus, and on the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The SDF advances further down the Euphrates and Iraqi forces take the rest of the border region. The United States vows to withdraw troops.
* 2019 – IS fighters are defeated at their last enclave on the Euphrates at the village of Baghouz, the SDF says. The SDF declares the “caliphate” eliminated.
Compiled by Angus McDowall; Editing by Tom Perry/Mark Heinrich