Shamima Begum was a London schoolgirl until Scotland Yard raised concerns she and two of her fellow pupils had travelled to Syria in February 2015.

The now 23-year-old was just 15 when she travelled to Istanbul in Turkey from Gatwick Airport to join the so-called Islamic State (IS) with her close friends at Bethnal Green Academy – Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15.

Despite her family’s warnings that Syria was a “dangerous place”, the then teenager, described as a “straight A student”, crossed the border just days later with the help of a Canadian spy named Mohammed Al Rasheed, according to reports.

In the Shamima Begum Story BBC podcast series, she said she was told to “pack nice clothes so you can dress nicely for your husband”.

Just 10 days after arriving in the city of Raqqa, Ms Begum, who is of Bangladeshi heritage, was married to a Dutchman named Yago Riedijk, who had converted to Islam.

They had three children together, who all later died from malnourishment or disease. They were a one-year-old girl, a three-month-old boy and newborn son.

Ms Begum left Raqqa with her husband in January 2017, but they were eventually split up, as she claimed he was arrested for spying and tortured.

She was eventually found nine months pregnant in a refugee camp in al-Roj in February 2019 by a Times journalist.

Ms Begum told the reporter it “didn’t faze me at all” when she saw her first “severed head”, but would “do anything required just to be able to come home”.

But the runaway schoolgirl said she did not regret travelling to IS-controlled Syria, saying she had a “good time”.

The then-Metropolitan Police commissioner Dame Cressida Dick said Ms Begum could expect to be “spoken to” if she returned to the UK.

In the same month, she was stripped of her British citizenship after announcing her desire to return to the UK with her then unborn third child.

The move was deemed only permissible under international law if it did not leave her stateless.

Since then, the former IS bride has been embroiled in a battle with the British legal system – she lost her latest legal challenge over the decision to deprive her of her British citizenship on Wednesday.

Ms Begum described the initial move to revoke her citizenship as “unjust on me and my son”.

The then-home secretary Sajid Javid said although he would never leave an individual stateless, his priority was the “safety and security” of the UK.

Mr Javid was criticised by Labour after Ms Begum’s son later died – with the then-shadow home secretary Diane Abbott describing the situation as “callous and inhumane”.

She lost her first appeal to return to the UK but successfully challenged the decision at the Court of Appeal.

But the Government submitted a fresh appeal, meaning her return was put on hold pending a Supreme Court battle.

She was dealt a fresh blow when the Supreme Court ruled she could not come back to the UK – leading to her begging the British public for forgiveness.

When she appeared on TV screens in September 2021, she had drastically changed her appearance – wearing a Nike baseball cap, a grey vest, Casio watch and with her fingernails painted pink.

Ms Begum said there was “no evidence” she was a key player in preparing terrorist acts and was prepared to prove her innocence in court.

She denied her Western physical appearance on Good Morning Britain – in stark contrast to the traditional Islamic dress she previously adorned – was a publicity stunt.

In the BBC podcast series released last month, she said she understood public anger towards her, but insisted she is not a “bad person”.

She told the podcast she accepted she is viewed “as a danger, as a risk”, but blamed her portrayal in the media.

Shamima Begum’s decision to go to the Islamic State was made when she was 15. No doubt, she was a young person who was influenced by what she consumed through slick Islamic State propaganda online. She was vulnerable to being drawn into the propaganda and those working on extremism realise that those personal vulnerabilities involve a range of possible factors.

What is troubling is that Begum did not try and leave the Islamic State as Sabra Kesinovic did. It is alleged that Kesinovic was murdered for trying to leave the Islamic State and it is possibly understandable that Begum did not leave because of fear. Yet, in her interviews to media sources after her residence in the Al-Hawl refugee camp in Syria, she stated that life in the Islamic State was fine until attacks on Raqqa. There was no sense of regret, until after her interviews with British media sources that seemed to open up some sense of reflection within herself.

Many in the U.K. simply have little compassion for Begum. No-one can blame them when hundreds of our citizens have been murdered by terrorists overflowing with rage which has been inflamed by the propaganda of Islamic State. Furthermore, the Home Secretary has said on many occasions that he has further information that has been made available to him that allows him to withdraw her citizenship.

However, in all of the discussions about Begum in the last few weeks, what has been missed and what few have considered, was that there was a young new born in the equation who was highly vulnerable to infection, dehydration and malnutrition. It seems that the obsession with Begum simply missed out this tiny British life that has now passed from this earth. That child simply did not have a chance for a future.

This whole scenario demonstrates one key fact. That we must do what is possible through third party countries in places like Syria to try and ensure the lives of innocents have a chance to survive. Whilst the U.K. has no consulate in Syria, we could have tried to protect that life through third party countries or at the very least, get medical support for that child through these countries. However, politics must have played a role in this as politicians would have been concerned about how public funds being used to save the life of a young child born to an IS bride, would be seen.

Moving forward, we must take into account the lives of the children born to IS sympathisers and supporters. We simply have a moral, practical and political responsibility to the children. We ask Her Majesty’s Government to open up channels of support through third party countries to provide some basic medical assistance to the children of these parents. This support does not have to be provided to their parents, but the innocents, their children must be supported. They are the innocents in this whole moral mess.

The man nicknamed Jihadi Jack has said that he wants to return to Britain, but he thinks it unlikely he will be allowed back.

Jack Letts, 23, speaking from the Kurdish jail where he has been held for two years on suspicion of joining IS after he ran away to Syria in 2014, said he missed his mum, pasties, and Doctor Who.

He told ITV News: “I feel British, I am British.

“If the UK accepted me I would go back to the UK, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Born in Oxford, the Muslim convert also has a Canadian passport thanks to his father’s nationality, but admitted: “I don’t know if that will still be valid.”

He told the broadcaster that he had lived on “the Oxford Street of Raqqa”, and married an Iraqi woman who has given birth to the couple’s son.

Mr Letts, a former pupil of Cherwell School, also confessed that he was pleased when he first heard news of the Paris terror attacks in 2015, and blamed his reaction on his experiences of coalition airstrikes in Raqqa.

He said when asked about the Bataclan atrocities: “At the time, I thought it was a good thing.

“At the time we had this idea, living in Raqqa, getting bombed every five minutes by coalition jets. I’ve seen children burnt alive.

“You have this idea of ‘why shouldn’t it happen to them?'”

But he claimed he has since had a change of heart, and sympathy for the innocent people killed, as he “realised that they had nothing to do with it”.

The Home Office said: “In recent days the Home Secretary has clearly stated that his priority is the safety and security of Britain and the people who live here.

“In order to protect this country, he has the power to deprive someone of their British citizenship where it would not render them stateless.

“We do not comment on individual cases, but any decisions to deprive individuals of their citizenship are based on all available evidence and not taken lightly.”

Mr Letts, who was a teenager when he fled to Syria, has not seen his parents in half a decade, and is missing some elements of his life in the UK.

He added: “I miss people mostly, I miss my mum. Five years I haven’t seen my mum, two years I haven’t spoken to my mum.

“I miss pasties. And Doctor Who.”

Mr Letts’ parents, John Letts and Sally Lane, from Chilswell Road, Oxford, are awaiting trial in the UK accused of sending money to their son.

They have denied three charges of funding terrorism.

This is not the first time Mr Letts has spoken to the British media since he fled his home.

In 2016, he told Channel 4 News that he missed Krispy Kreme doughnuts and kebabs, and had narrowly survived an airstrike with just a “scratch”.

And when asked if he was an IS fighter, he replied “Currently I’m not” before saying later in a statement that he opposes the militant group.

Mr Letts’ interview comes the day after the family of Islamic State bride Shamima Begum confirmed they would be challenging the Home Office’s decision to revoke the 19-year-old’s British citizenship.

Ms Begum was one of three schoolgirls to leave Bethnal Green to join the terror cult in 2015 and recently gave birth to a baby boy, her third child.

They said in a letter to the Home Secretary on Thursday: “We must, therefore, assist Shamima in challenging your decision to take away the one thing that is her only hope at rehabilitation, her British citizenship.”

An east London schoolgirl who left Britain as a 15-year-old to join the Islamic State group is now heavily pregnant and wants to come home.

Shamima Begum was tracked down by The Times to a refugee camp in northern Syria where she is now 19-years-old, the bride of an Islamic State fighter, nine months pregnant and has had two infant children who are dead. Her husband is in captivity.

Stating that “I don’t regret coming here,” she told The Times: “I’m not the same silly little 15-year-old schoolgirl who ran away from Bethnal Green four years ago.”

She also told the paper: “The caliphate is over.

“There was so much oppression and corruption that I don’t think they deserved victory. I know what everyone at home thinks of me as I have read all that was written about me online. But I just want to come home to have my child. That’s all I want right now. I’ll do anything required just to be able to come home and live quietly with my child.”

She 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 in Syria who had left London they year before. They each married an Isis foreign fighter, according to The Times.

Ms Sultana was reported to have been killed in an airstrike on Raqqa in May 2016, while Ms Begum has recently heard second-hand from other people that Miss Abase, and the other schoolgirl who left Britain in 2014, may still be alive.

When she arrived, Miss Begum was put in a house where jihadist brides-to-be waited to be married, she said.

Ms Begum was married 10 days after arriving in Raqqa in 2015 to a Dutchman who had converted to Islam. She claims her husband was later arrested, charged with spying and tortured.

She 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 in the recent months. Her son had an unknown illness worsened  by malnutrition, The Times said.

She said she had a “mostly” a “normal life in Raqqa, every now and then bombing and stuff”.

She told the paper: “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 family went to Baghuz and she left there two weeks ago along a three-mile long corridor east of the town. Her husband surrendered to a group of Syrian fighters allied to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and she has not seen him since, according to The Times.

The Home Office said it does not comment on individual cases, although anyone who returns to the UK after travelling to IS territory faces criminal investigation and stricter laws are now in place.

Security Minister Ben Wallace said: “The UK advises against all travel to Syria and parts of Iraq. Anyone who does travel to these areas, for whatever reason, is putting themselves in considerable danger.

“Everyone who returns from taking part in the conflict in Syria or Iraq must expect to be investigated by the police to determine if they have committed criminal offences, and to ensure that they do not pose a threat to our national security.

“There are a range of terrorism offences where individuals can be convicted for crimes committed overseas and we can also use Temporary Exclusion Orders to control an individuals’ return to the UK.”

Moscow said on Friday its forces may have killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an air strike in Syria last month, but Washington said it could not corroborate the death and Western and Iraqi officials were sceptical.

The secretive Islamic State leader has frequently been reported killed or wounded since he declared a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from a mosque in Mosul in 2014, after leading his fighters on a sweep through northern Iraq.

If the report does prove true, it would be one of the biggest blows yet to Islamic State, which is trying to defend its shrinking territory against an array of forces backed by regional and global powers in both Syria and Iraq.

But in the absence of independent confirmation, two U.S. officials said U.S. agencies were sceptical of the report. Several Iraqi security officials said Iraq was doubtful as well.

“His death has been reported so often that you have to be cautious till a formal Daesh statement comes,” a European security official said, using an Arabic acronym for the group.

U.S. Navy Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said: “We have no information to corroborate those reports.”

The Russian Defence Ministry said on its Facebook page that it was checking information that Baghdadi was killed in the strike on the outskirts of Raqqa in Syria, launched after Russia received intelligence about a meeting of Islamic State leaders.

“On May 28, after drones were used to confirm the information on the place and time of the meeting of IS leaders, between 00:35 and 00:45, Russian air forces launched a strike on the command point where the leaders were located,” the statement said.

“According to the information which is now being checked via various channels, also present at the meeting was Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was eliminated as a result of the strike,” the ministry said.

OPERATING CAUTIOUSLY

However, a colonel with the Iraqi national security service told Reuters Baghdadi was not believed to have been in Raqqa at the time of the strike in late May. One of Baghdadi’s aides may have been killed rather than Baghdadi himself, the colonel said.

He said that Baghdadi was believed to be operating cautiously in the border area between Iraq and Syria with just a handful of close aides, and avoiding using telecommunications equipment to evade surveillance.

Another Iraqi intelligence official said the Russians had not shared any information with Iraqi authorities to indicate Baghdadi was killed. Iraq was checking the report and would announce his death if it received “solid confirmation”.

Hoshiyar Zebari, a long-serving former Iraqi foreign minister and now a senior adviser to the government of the Kurdish autonomous region, also told Reuters there was no confirmation of Baghdadi’s death.

The Russian defence ministry statement said the strike was believed to have killed several other senior leaders of the group in addition to Baghdadi, as well as around 30 field commanders and up to 300 of their personal guards.

The IS leaders had gathered at the command centre, in a southern suburb of Raqqa, to discuss possible routes for the militants’ retreat from the city, the statement said.

The United States was informed in advance about the place and time of the strike, the Russian military said.

CLOSE TO DEFEAT

Islamic State fighters are close to defeat in the twin capitals of the group’s territory, Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, after nearly three years ruling over millions of people in a wide swathe of territory in both countries.

Russia supports the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, which is fighting against Islamic State fighters, one front in a multi-sided civil war. The United States supports Kurdish and Arab fighters in Syria who are separately planning an assault on Raqqa.

In Iraq, the U.S.-backed government has been battling to recapture Mosul since October last year after driving the group out of most of the rest of the territory it had seized.

The last public video footage of Baghdadi shows him dressed in black clerical robes declaring his caliphate from the pulpit of Mosul’s mediaeval Grand al-Nuri mosque back in 2014.

Born Ibrahim al-Samarrai, Baghdadi is an Iraqi in his mid-forties, who broke away from al Qaeda in 2013 after years participating in the insurgency against U.S. forces in Iraq and the Iraqi government. The U.S. State Department has offered a $25 million reward for information leading to his arrest.

A number of senior IS figures have been killed in air strikes or special forces raids since the United States launched its campaign against the group in 2014, including Baghdadi’s deputy Abu Ali al-Anbari, the group’s “minister of war” Abu Omar al-Shishani, and its media director Abu Muhammad al-Furqan.

Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, cast doubt on the report Baghdadi may have been killed. He said that according to his information, Baghdadi was located in another part of Syria at the end of May.

“The information is that as of the end of last month Baghdadi was in Deir al-Zor, in the area between Deir al-Zor and Iraq, in Syrian territory,” he said by phone.

Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is on the brink of losing the two main centres of his ‘caliphate’ but even though he is on the run, it may take years to capture or kill him, officials and experts said.

Islamic State fighters are close to defeat in the twin capitals of the group’s territory, Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, and officials say Baghdadi is steering clear of both, hiding in thousands of square miles of desert between the two.

“In the end, he will either be killed or captured, he will not be able to remain underground forever,” said Lahur Talabany, the head of counter-terrorism at the Kurdistan Regional Government, the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq. “But this is a few years away still,” he told Reuters.

One of Baghdadi’s main concerns is to ensure those around him do not betray him for the $25 million reward offered by the United States to bring him “to justice”, said Hisham al-Hashimi, who advises Middle East governments on Islamic State affairs.

“With no land to rule openly, he can no longer claim the title caliph,” Hashimi said. “He is a man on the run and the number of his supporters is shrinking as they lose territory.”

Iraqi forces have retaken much of Mosul, the northern Iraqi city the hardline group seized in June 2014 and from which Baghdadi declared himself “caliph” or leader of all Muslims shortly afterwards. Raqqa, his capital in Syria, is nearly surrounded by a coalition of Syrian Kurdish and Arab groups.

The last public video footage of him shows him dressed in black clerical robes declaring his caliphate from the pulpit of Mosul’s medieval Grand al-Nuri mosque back in 2014.

Born Ibrahim al-Samarrai, Baghdadi is a 46-year-old Iraqi who broke away from al-Qaeda in 2013, two years after the capture and killing of the group’s leader Osama bin Laden.

He grew up in a religious family, studied Islamic Theology in Baghdad and joined the Salaafi jihadist insurgency in 2003, the year of the US-led invasion of Iraq. He was caught by the Americans who released him about a year later as they considered him then as a civilian rather than a military target.

BOUNTY

He is shy and reserved, Hashimi said, and has recently stuck to the sparsely populated Iraq-Syria border where drones and strangers are easy to spot.

The U.S. Department of State’s Counter-Terrorism Rewards Program had put the same $25 million bounty on Bin Laden and Iraqi former president Saddam Hussein and the reward is still available for Bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Neither Saddam nor Bin Laden were voluntarily betrayed, but the bounties complicated their movements and communications.

“The reward creates worry and tension, it restricts his movements and limit the number of his guards,” said Fadhel Abu Ragheef, a Baghdad-based expert on extremist groups. “He doesn’t stay more than 72 hours in any one place.”

Baghdadi “has become nervous and very careful in his movements”, said Talabany, whose services are directly involved in countering Islamic State plots. “His circle of trust has become even smaller.”

His last recorded speech was issued in early November, two weeks after the start of the Mosul battle, when he urged his followers to fight the “unbelievers” and “make their blood flow as rivers”.

U.S. and Iraqi officials believe he has left operational commanders behind with diehard followers to fight the battles of Mosul and Raqqa, to focus on his own survival.

It is not possible to confirm his whereabouts.

Baghdadi does not use phones and has a handful of approved couriers to communicate with his two main aides, Iyad al-Obaidi, his defence minister, and Ayad al-Jumaili, in charge of security. There was no confirmation of an April 1 Iraqi state TV report that Jumaili had been killed.

Baghdadi moves in ordinary cars, or the kind of pick-up trucks used by farmers, between hideouts on both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian border, with just a driver and two bodyguards, said Hashimi.

The region is well known to his men as the hotbed of the Sunni insurgency against U.S. forces that invaded Iraq and later the Shi’ite-led governments that took over the country.

At the height of its power two years ago, Islamic State ruled over millions of people in territory running from northern Syria through towns and villages along the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys to the outskirts of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

It persecuted non-Sunnis and even Sunnis who did not agree with its extreme version of Islamic law, with public executions and whippings for violating strict controls on appearance, behaviour and movement.

But the group has been retreating since in the face of a multitude of local, regional and international forces, driven into action by the scores of deadly attacks around the world that it has claimed or inspired.

A few hundred thousand people now live in the areas under the group’s control, in and around Raqqa and Deir al-Zor, in Syria’s east, and in a few pockets south and west of Mosul. Hashimi said Islamic State was moving some fighters out of Raqqa before it was encircled to regroup in Deir al-Zor.

Mosul, with pre-war population of 2 million, was at least four times the size of any other the group has held. Up to 200,000 people are still trapped in the Old City, Islamic State’s besieged enclave in Mosul, lacking supplies and being used as human shields to obstruct the progress of Iraqi forces by a U.S-led international coalition.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, made of Kurdish and Arab groups supported by the U.S.-led coalition, began to attack Raqqa last week, after a months-long campaign to cut it off.

The militants are also fighting Russian and Iranian-backed forces in Syria loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, and mainly Sunni Muslim Syrian rebels backed by Turkey.

The last official report about Baghdadi was from the Iraqi military on Feb. 13. Iraqi F-16s carried out a strike on a house where he was thought to be meeting other commanders, in western Iraq, near the Syrian border, it said.

Overall, Islamic State has 8,000 fighters left, of which 2,000 are foreigners from other Arab states, Europe, Russia and central Asia, said Abu Ragheef.

“A small number compared to the tens of thousands arrayed against them in both countries, but a force to be reckoned with, made up of die-hards with nothing to lose, hiding in the middle of civilians and making extensive use of booby traps, mines and explosives,” he said.

The U.S. government has a joint task force to track down Baghdadi which includes special operations forces, the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies as well as spy satellites of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency.

It will take more than that to erase his influence, Talabany said. “He is still considered the leader of ISIL and many continue to fight for him; that hasn’t changed drastically,” he said, using one of Islamic State’s acronyms.

Even if killed or captured, he added, “his legacy and that of ISIL will endure unless radical extremism is tackled.”

An audio message purporting to come from the spokesman of Islamic State called on followers to launch attacks in the United States, Europe, Russia, Australia, Iraq, Syria, Iran, and the Philippines during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which began in late May.

The audio clip was distributed on Monday on Islamic State’s channel on Telegram, an encrypted messaging application. It was attributed to the militant group’s official spokesman, Abi al-Hassan al-Muhajer.

The authenticity of the recording could not be independently verified, but the voice was the same as a previous audio message purported to be from the spokesman.

“O lions of Mosul, Raqqa, and Tal Afar, God bless those pure arms and bright faces, charge against the rejectionists and the apostates and fight them with the strength of one man,” said al-Muhajer. Rejectionist is a derogatory term used to refer to Shi’ite Muslims.

“To the brethren of faith and belief in Europe, America, Russia, Australia, and others. Your brothers in your land have done well so take them as role models and do as they have done.”

Western-backed Syrian forces should isolate Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria “by the spring” before an offensive on the city itself, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said on Saturday.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, which includes the powerful Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, launched the campaign on Raqqa in November.

It announced this month the start of a new phase in the offensive, aiming to complete its encirclement of the city and cut off the road to the militants’ stronghold in Deir al-Zor, southeast of Raqqa.

“I hope that isolation will be completed by the spring and then operations to liberate Raqqa itself can begin thereafter,” Fallon told reporters in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq.

Islamic State is fighting hard to preserve its foothold in Syria as it loses ground in Iraq.

U.S.-backed Iraqi and Kurdish forces last month dislodged the militants from the eastern side of Mosul, their last city stronghold in Iraq, and are preparing an offensive on the parts of the city that lie west of the Tigris river.

“Raqqa is a much smaller city than Mosul but will clearly be defended very vigorously by Daesh and that means the operation to liberate Raqqa has to be very carefully prepared, as the operation for Mosul was,” Fallon said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.”Once Raqqa is liberated after Mosul, we will see the beginning of the end of this terrible caliphate,” he said. Islamic State declared the caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014.

Britain is part of the U.S-led coalition supporting forces battling Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria.

The U.S. military has confirmed the killing of Junaid Hussain, the British Citizen who had become a central player in the cyber activities of ISIS or Islamic State. Hussain was killed in a targeted drone strike on August 24th whilst travelling in Syria and was married to Sally Jones, an ex-punk rocker from Chatham who has taken on the name of Umm Hussain Al-Brittani and who is presumed to live in ISIS controlled Raqqa.

Hussain was convicted in 2012 of leaking the private contacts of Tony Blair and was also believed to be central in the cyber activities of ISIS. For example, he is thought to have been behind the release of the personal information of around 1,300 U.S. military and government employees, with the information posted onto a variety of public sites. The hacking and collection of the information showed the growing capability of Islamic State sympathisers in their ability to capture sensitive information.

There is no doubt that the killing of Hussain will mean that U.S. and U.K. military sources will breathe a sigh of relief given the cyber capabilities of Hussain. Hussain and his wife were pro-active in trying to recruit people on-line to undertake attacks in Europe and Western nations and this killing will certainly deliver a blow to the cyber capabilities of ISIS. Yet, the group is highly active using various media arms in trying to recruit people on-line, including disseminating well made and high definition films means to inspire viewers to become supporters and worst still, join the group in Syria or Iraq.