IT WAS JAIL for Mamun Rashid, 28, after he appeared at Woolwich Crown Court on 6th January 2022 – twelve years and three months, to be precise, followed by an extended five year licence period.

The Court heard that Rashid went to Istanbul in July 2018, intending to travel on to Syria, where he hoped to join those fighting the government. He was found by the Turkish authorities close to the Turkey-Syria border in 2019 and arrested.

Shamima Begum, then aged 15, travelled to Turkey in 2015, together with two schoolfriends. They did reach Syria, where each of them married a member of Daesh. Her friends are now dead, as are the three children Shamima bore, and she remains in a refugee camp.

Once the Turkish authorities found Rashid, they sent him back to the UK. Shamima has been trying to get back to the UK but has not been allowed in. The UK Government is so determined that Shamima should not return that they have removed her British citizenship. This met with some public disapproval, and the Government has started to change the law to make it easier for them to remove other people’s citizenship in the future. The authorities were much less bothered about letting her out: no one thought to stop three teenagers, all under age and travelling to Syria, and check that they were safe.

The Court heard that Rashid had enrolled on a university course and taken out a student load, which appears to have funded his travel, and that he had expressed a desire to be a martyr. Having initially pleaded not guilty to the charge of preparation of terrorist acts contrary to Section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006, Rashid admitted the offences at the Court hearing and then received his sentence.

A 24 year old man tries to go to fight in Syria and he doesn’t get there and he is returned and we let him in. He is tried and imprisoned after admitting an offence.  A 15 year old schoolgirl tries to go to Syria to marry a fighter and she succeeds – and becomes such a danger to safety in Great Britain that we cannot ever let her back into the country and we cannot give her a trial and we cannot consider whether our safeguarding services failed her.

How do these double standards happen?

PS: the Home Secretary who first removed Shamima Begum’s British citizenship was none other than Sajid Javid who, as Health Secretary, is testing the flexibility of science. Small world, innit?  

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