FREEING jihadi bride Shamima Begum from her prison camp would be like “releasing a shark into a swimming pool”, the daughter of a Brit murdered by IS has said.
Bethany Haines, 28, whose dad David was beheaded by Britons who, like Begum, fled to join the terrorists, said: “She’s a ticking time-bomb.”
She spoke as it emerged Begum, 26, could be freed from Syria’s al-Roj camp as Kurdish-led fighters holding her lose ground to government forces.
Bethany said: “She isn’t one of us.
“She watched the video of my dad’s death.
“She showed no remorse.
“She deserves to die in the camp she’s in.”
Aid worker Mr Haines, 44, from Perthshire, was executed in Syria in 2014.
Begum was stripped of citizenship after leaving London aged 15 in 2015 to join IS.
If released, it is feared it could aid her legal bid to return.
In a 2019 BBC interview, Begum called the Manchester Arena atrocity that killed 22 people a “kind of retaliation” and that the terrorist reasoning for the attack was a “fair justification“.
Begum is among about 20 British women, 40 children and ten men said to be in the camps that hold tens of thousands in north-east Syria.
A Home Office source said that stateless Begum’s “position has not changed regardless of what’s happening in Syria”.
Who is Shamima Begum?
ISIS bride Shamima Begum, who was born in Britain, was stripped of her British citizenship on February 20, 2019.
Begum had fled the UK in February 2015 with two other girls from the same school in East London to join the fledgling caliphate in Iraq and Syria which had emerged out of the chaos of war in those two countries.
On February 14, 2019, with the ISIS empire fell, she declared that she wanted to come home with her son.
But she appeared to show no remorse and called the 2017 Manchester Arena massacre of 22 people attending a concert “justified”.
According to BBC Middle East correspondent Quentin Sommerville, Begum “still believes IS propaganda”.
He said: “When I asked her about the enslavement, murder and rape of Yazidi women by IS, she said ‘Shia do the same in Iraq’.
“She had little to offer in way of apology to the millions of Iraqis and Syrians whose lives were destroyed by IS.”
Her principled position has sparked intense debate about the UK’s responsibilities to jihadis who despise the country and everything it stands for, but want to return from Syria.
The case took a dramatic turn on February 20 2019 when it emerged the Home Office had opted to strip Ms Begum of her British citizenship.
The now-16-year-old claims she is “willing to change” her ways while pleading for “mercy” from Britain and says newborn son Jerah is sick.
Her appeals against the decision have all been denied.
