The UK discovered Shamima Begum’s face one day in February 2015. A poor quality image from surveillance cameras at Gatwick airport, south London. The young woman had just taken the road to Syria, at the age of 15, in the company of two friends from her London district.
Married to a Dutch jihadist on the spot, found in a refugee camp in 2019, Shamima Begum was stripped of her British nationality, a decision which she challenges in court. After having first expressed her lack of regrets to the journalists who came to meet her in Syria, the “Jihadi bride”, as the British press nicknamed her, ended up asking for her repatriation to the United Kingdom.
“I know it’s hard for the British to forgive me, they lost loved ones to Daesh, and I too can empathize with them in this way,” she said in an interview with the channel ITV in September 2021.