Shamima Begum is ‘a model detainee’ because she is one of the few women who refuses to wear a niqab despite ISIS enforcers running the Syrian detention center, camp officials say

Shamima Begum has been described as ‘a model detainee’ by authorities running the detention center in which she has been held after fleeing the UK at the age of 15 to join ISIS.

24-year-old Begum, dubbed the Syrian camp’s most famous British prisoner, is considered ‘courageous’ by Roj’s director, Rashid Omar.

“She is one of the few who has refused to wear a niqab,” he said The times.

“Under the circumstances here, given our difficulties in protecting women, that is a courageous decision.”

Roj detention camp in northeastern Syria It is home to 2,600 inmates, 95 percent of whom are women at the facility, from 55 countries, who choose to wear a niqab or are forced to do so.

The niqab is a long garment worn by Muslim women to conceal their entire body and face, except their eyes, to express modesty.

Omar revealed that in the Roj camp, “women are beaten for disobeying orders, and then threatened with death to deter them from reporting these attacks.”

But this hasn’t stopped Begum from walking around the camp in Primark clothes, Nike sneakers and make-up allegedly smuggled in by Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) soldiers guarding the camp’s gates.

Images of Begum show her in the camp with her hair down, after she reportedly had it cut by a fellow jihadist bride in the camp.

Omar explained that Turkey has carried out several waves of airstrikes on northeastern Syria since October last year in an attempt to eradicate Kurdish militants in Iraq and Syria.

“It feels like we’re under some kind of siege here,” he said.

He added that the women feel empowered when they hear bombardments against them and that they have started acting “as one hand.”

‘They see me and my staff and they run their fingers over their throats. They are better organized and more powerful,” he said.

As Roj has been hit by strikes, conditions in the camp, where Begum has lived since 2019, have been labeled by the Red Cross as ‘extremely unstable’ as power and water supplies have been cut off.

Begum has previously compared life in the camp to being “worse than prison” because: “With prison sentences at least you know it’s going to end, but here you don’t know if it’s going to end.”

Begum is just one of an estimated 60 Britons still living in the camp after her British citizenship was revoked on national security grounds in 2019, leaving her stateless.

Her refusal to renounce ISIS after being found in al-Hol camp five years ago led to the Interior Ministry revoking her citizenship.

When she was first discovered in al-Hol, the ISIS bride was pictured wearing a black hijab, but since moving to Roj she has adopted a more Westernized image – a move that exudes courage in the eyes of those in authority. camp.

It comes just days after the 24-year-old lost an initial attempt to challenge the revocation of her British citizenship in the High Court.

A judicial spokesperson confirmed on March 25 that Begum had asked the Court of Appeal for the green light to take her case to the High Court, but this had been refused.

Begum will now have to directly ask the Supreme Court to hear her case.

Baroness Carr, Chief Justice of the Court, dismissed her appeal at the Court of Appeal last month, saying: ‘You could say the decision in Ms Begum’s case was harsh.

“You could also argue that Ms Begum is the author of her own misfortune, but it is not for this court to agree or disagree with either position.

‘The court’s only task was to assess whether the confiscation decision was unlawful. Since this is not the case, Ms Begum’s appeal is rejected.’

Last year, Begum lost an appeal against the decision to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), which said the revocation of her citizenship was lawful.

But her lawyers have argued that the Home Office’s decision to revoke her citizenship was unlawful, partly because British officials had not properly considered whether she was a potential victim of human trafficking.

Begum has previously admitted knowingly joining a banned organisation, but claimed she was ‘ashamed’ of her actions and regretted them.

Earlier this year, three judges at the Court of Appeal unanimously rejected her attempt to overturn the SIAC decision.

The once East London schoolgirl traveled to Syria in 2015 to support the IS terror group, along with her two friends Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15.

It is believed that Sultana was killed when a house was blown up and Abase’s fate remains unknown.

Ignoring her family’s warnings that Syria was a ‘dangerous place’, the once ‘straight A-student’ married a Dutch Islamic State fighter, who was currently being held by us in a Kurdish detention center, and started her life in one of the most ruthless terrorist groups in the world. history.

Shortly after Begum married Yago Riedijk, who had converted to Islam, he had three children, all of whom later died from malnutrition or disease.

It involved a one-year-old girl, a three-month-old boy and a newborn son.

In a 2019 interview, BBC Middle East correspondent Quentin Sommerville asked Begum if the terror group’s “beheading videos” were one of the things that attracted her.

She replied, “Not just the beheading videos, the ones showing families and things like that in the park. The good life they can offer you. Not just the fight videos, but the fighting videos, I think.”

She continues to live in the Roj detention centre, while her lawyers claim that conditions in the camp have reached a ‘critical point’, with ‘near starvation’ and disease occurring on a daily basis.