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Shamima Begum PA Images

Jihadi bride Shamima Begum cannot come back to UK, Home Secretary Priti Patel says

Shamima Begum was 15 when she and two friends left London to marry Islamic State fighters in Syria in 2015.

BRITISH JIHADI BRIDE Shamima Begum has reportedly been told by Home Secretary Priti Patel to give up on any hopes of being allowed to return to the UK.

Begum was 15 when she ran away to join the jihadists with two school friends from Bethnal Green in east London in 2015.

She later married Dutch-born Yago Riedijk and spent more than three years living under the group’s rule.

Now a 19-year-old mother, she has become a refugee after the group’s proto-state collapsed.

Separated from her Dutch IS fighter husband, and after giving birth to a son in the camp in February, she now wants to come home.

In an interview last week, Begum pleaded to be allowed to return home, saying her only role in the so-called caliphate was to “make babies”.

However, when Begum’s request was put to Patel, the Home Secretary replied: “No way, no way.”

“Our job is to keep our country safe,” Patel told The Sun newspaper.

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,” Patel said.

Begum has claimed she is suffering from mental health problems and that she now “hates” so-called IS following the death of her three babies.

Includes reporting by Hayley Halpin

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