Shamima Begum school brings in ‘robust’ measures to spot radicalisation in pupils

From the London Evening Standard

The school that Shamima Begum and two other schoolgirls attended before they left the UK to become Islamic State brides today said it had introduced “robust” initiatives to prevent pupils being radicalised.

Bethnal Green Academy, where Begum, then 15, was a pupil when she left with two friends to travel to Syria in 2015, was taken over by the Mulberry Academy chain in 2018. In 2015 the school was criticised for failing to do more to spot the girls could be at risk, after a friend had travelled to join IS just two months before.

Mulberry said it was now a “very different” school.

SHAMIMA Begum’s return to the UK has been put on hold after the UK Government won it’s fight to take its case to the Supreme Court. The Government asked for permission to appeal against a ruling that Shamima Begum should be allowed to return to the UK to challenge the deprivation of her British citizenship.

At a remote hearing on Friday, the Government argued that the Court of Appeal wrongly concluded Ms Begum should be granted leave to enter the UK despite the fact that “she is assessed to pose a threat to UK national security”.

Sir James Eadie QC, for the Home Office, told the court there were “significant national security concerns” about Ms Begum’s potential return to the UK.

He said: “The exposure of the public to an increased risk of terrorism is not justifiable or appropriate in an individual case on fairness grounds save perhaps in the very rarest of cases … this was not such a rare case. . . The public will be less well protected if Ms Begum returns than it would be if she does not return.”