UK govt wins appeal bid in ‘ISIS bride’ case

London: The UK government on Friday won permission to appeal against a court ruling allowing London-born ISIS bride Shamima Begum to return to Britain to challenge stripping of her British citizenship.

Bangladeshi-origin Begum, now 20, was one of three schoolgirls who fled London to join ISIS in Syria in 2015.

The UK Court of Appeal ruled that the case must go ahead to the Supreme Court before she is allowed back into the country because the case raised a point of law of public importance that only the highest court can resolve.

Sir James Eadie, representing the Home Office, told the court there was a “big issue at stake” in the case, to decide what should happen when someone cannot have a fair appeal over being stripped of their citizenship as a “result of going abroad and aligning with terrorist groups”.

He said it was “an issue of real pressing public importance” which was “perhaps the central democratic issue of our times”.

Lady Justice King, the head of the panel of three judges at the UK Court of Appeal, which includes Indian-origin Lord Justice Rabinder Singh, allowed the permission to appeal and also said that they are separately referring The Sun’ newspaper to the Attorney General because of a potential contempt of court in publishing a story about the previous High Court judgment in the case earlier this month, allowing Begum re-entry for her legal fight in the UK, before it was announced in court. (PTI)