When we first heard the story of Shamima Begum, how many of us, in truth, felt remotely sorry for her?
This was a 15-year-old London schoolgirl who had tricked her Bangladeshi parents into thinking she was going on holiday and left for war-torn Syria with two friends to marry terrorists. Many — myself included — believed that she should rot in hell for this criminal stupidity.
This deluded girl witnessed — and, who knows, may have participated in — the most appalling atrocities. When, years later, she was found in a refugee camp, Begum coldly revealed she had felt ‘unfazed’ when she saw a severed head in a bin.
No wonder we applauded ex-Home Secretary Sajid Javid when he stripped her of her British citizenship, denying her the right to return.
Now this bride of Isis is said to be ‘angry, upset and crying’ after five Supreme Court justices unanimously ruled yesterday that she cannot return to the UK to fight for her citizenship to be restored, amid concerns over ‘national security’.
Begum has now lost three babies to starvation and pneumonia. She is living under armed guard, in conditions far more squalid than she would face in any British prison. Her husband — an equally idiotic Dutch-born jihadi — is in jail. Her family cannot see her.
Lord alive, what kind of risk does this 21-year-old — who would surely be watched closely by the authorities and the country at large were she ever to come home — pose?
‘Lord alive, what kind of risk does this 21-year-old — who would surely be watched closely by the authorities and the country at large were she ever to come home — pose?’ Amanda Platell said
Whatever this is, it isn’t justice. Of the near-900 Brits — mostly men, of course — who travelled to join Isis (many committing the most sickening atrocities), 40 per cent have been allowed to return. Many are now in prison.
But not Shamima, stuck in her physical and legal no-man’s-land.
As a teenager, Begum was brainwashed by a hideous ideology.
Should she pay for that for the rest of her life, when rapists and murderers avoid deportation claiming it would breach their ‘human rights’?
Signing up to a barbaric death cult was more than a mistake: it was a crime. Begum crossed all barriers of decency. She slept with the enemy in the most grotesque way. And yet forgiveness must remain the core of our Christian culture — especially for children. She is British whether or not she has a passport. Paedophiles get lesser sentences than she has served in the hell of those camps.
The judges are wrong. Shamima must come home to face stiff British justice. How else can we be a nation that believes in redemption?
Should have used a driver
After Tiger Woods’s catastrophic car crash this week, his family insist he will come back stronger. His dwindling fan base surely hopes so.
But as he lies in hospital, leg shattered and career hanging in the balance, might this finally be the moment Tiger pauses to regret how he squandered his role as a husband and father with his recklessness, selfishness, his mistresses and his pain-prescription drugs?
His tragic tale reveals a simple truth. You can hit all the holes-in-one you like — but if you keep chasing birdies, your life will end up below par.
Canine victims of social media?
How horrible that Lady Gaga’s two French bulldogs have been dognapped by masked assailants who appallingly shot dog walker Ryan Fischer in the chest
How horrible that Lady Gaga’s two French bulldogs have been dognapped by masked assailants who appallingly shot dog walker Ryan Fischer in the chest.
My heart goes out to the ‘devastated’ pop star, who has offered half a million dollars for the animals’ safe return, ‘no questions asked’. But I have a few questions. First: ‘Is Ryan OK?’
Also, as law enforcement experts have warned, isn’t there a risk that offering life-changing sums of money as a reward will only increase the likelihood of such crimes being committed?
Finally, we must ask the difficult question: as Gaga is one of the most famous women in the world, could posting pictures of her dogs on social media have caused them to become targets?
In Britain, dog thefts have trebled since the lockdown. If huge ransoms are now to be demanded, what hope do ordinary folk have of being reunited with their pets?
What terrible timing for Prince Harry. As his beloved grandmother made her historic intervention imploring people to have the Covid jab this week, he emerged just hours later, rapping his way around LA with so-called comedian James Corden and lamenting how awful his home country has become.
Seeming to upstage the Queen was bad enough. But what made it all so much worse was how so many of the other royals — from Charles and Camilla to William and Kate — have been a model of duty during this pandemic.
Perhaps he needs a lesson in ‘service’ after all.
Disappearing facts
Princess Latifa Al Maktoum begs our police to investigate the disappearance of her older sister, Shamsa, who was kidnapped by her father’s goons on British soil some 20 years ago and is believed to be held captive in the United Arab Emirates — as is Latifa herself.
A sorry case from a country with the most appalling record on women’s rights.
Yet with hundreds of British girls going missing here every year, surely we should be investigating the disappearance of our own, not the daughters of foreign dictators?
Before his death, Captain Sir Tom Moore claimed that, had he not walked around his garden raising £32 million for the NHS, his demise ‘would have made one little line in the local newspaper’. It was therefore ‘odd and rather touching’, that people he’d never met might weep for him. Today, a private funeral will be held for that brave 100-year-old soldier, and a nation will shed a tear while saluting his strength and example.
Don’t sell ’em Pike!
A bit late for actress Rosamund Pike, 42, to boo-hoo over her boobs being digitally enhanced in posters for her forgettable 2011 movie Johnny English Reborn
A bit late for actress Rosamund Pike, 42, to boo-hoo over her boobs being digitally enhanced in posters for her forgettable 2011 movie Johnny English Reborn.
‘My breasts were augmented,’ moans Oxford-educated Ros, adding that distributors made her out to look as if she had ‘a really impressive chest, which I do not’.
As a fan of Pike’s cascading bosom in Jack Reacher, a hit movie released only a year after her unwatchable spy comedy, I disagree. Perhaps what movie actresses in their 40s really fear is not their bosoms disappearing, but their careers.
Perhaps what movie actresses in their 40s really fear is not their bosoms disappearing, but their careers
Westminster wars
It’s daggers drawn. Home Secretary Priti Patel is demanding a proper inquiry into the police’s allegedly criminal mishandling of the ‘Nick’ VIP sex scandal. Met boss Cressida Dick, who presided over it, still refuses to take any responsibility.
So who will win?
My money’s on the Met’s first female boss taking gold-plated early retirement.
Dog experts conclude the reason Boris’s mutt Dilyn is still not housetrained and is allegedly ruining handbags — when not getting rampantly intimate with the furniture or chewing rare books — is because he hasn’t had the snip. Well, they do say dogs take on the characteristics of their owners.
Good news that Radio 2’s Jo Whiley has forced the Government to give the jab to vulnerable people with learning difficulties, like Jo’s sister, Frances, who is happily now recovering from the virus. But how worrying that it takes celebs like her and Marcus Rashford to make this out-of-touch Government see what is obvious, just and fair.
In her search for eternal happiness, the thrice-married Ulrika Jonsson has joined dating app Tinder. As it happens, so has that other singleton James Hewitt, former squeeze — and betrayer — of Princess Diana. Two publicity-hungry love-lorns who have sold their stories to the highest bidder: surely it’s a match made in social-media heaven?
In her search for eternal happiness, the thrice-married Ulrika Jonsson has joined dating app Tinder. As it happens, so has that other singleton James Hewitt, former squeeze — and betrayer — of Princess Diana
Simon Cowell says that after months of agony fearing he’d never walk again, he’s fitter than ever thanks to the love and care of his long-term, long-suffering girlfriend Lauren Silverman, mother of their son Eric. Great news, but, surely he’s fit enough to finally walk down the aisle and marry her?
