Johannes de Jong

Shamima Begum’s baby shouldn’t pay the price for his mother’s treachery

What should be done with Shamima Begum? Her husband Yago Riedijk, a Dutch jihadi fighter, has now said he wants to bring Begum home after her British citizenship was revoked. ‘We should live in Holland’, he told the BBC. In the Netherlands, the response has been clear: they are not welcome. The Dutch government takes a similar approach to the British when it comes to the question of dealing with citizens who travelled to Syria. Where a foreign fighter has dual citizenship, their Dutch passport can be taken away. If this isn’t possible, there is little the Dutch are willing to do to rescue their citizens from the limbo of the refugee camps or jails of the territory where Isis once reigned in terror. So Begum’s possible escape route to the Netherlands looks like a non-starter.

There is no doubt that Begum – now the mother to a young baby boy – is in a desperate situation.

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