Shamima Begum and her two teenage friends were smuggled into Syria by a spy working for Canada – before Justin Trudeau’s nation then then conspired with the UK to cover up its role, a new book claims.
The so-called Jihadi Bride was stripped of her British citizenship in 2019 after she fled Britain four years earlier to join the Islamic State (IS).
Fresh revelations claim the now-23-year-old was trafficked into the Middle East by a double agent, on the payroll of both IS and Canadian intelligence.
But officials in Ottawa are then said to have kept quiet, even as Scotland Yard ran a huge, international search for Begum, and her friends Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, according to The Secret History of the Five Eyes.
Five Eyes is an intelligence sharing alliance, formalised during the Cold War, between the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The book, by journalist Richard Kerbaj, alleges that Canada finally admitted its involvement in the plot as bosses feared becoming exposed, then also managed to convince Britain to cover-up its role.
In response to the claims, calls have been made for an inquiry into what the police and intelligence services knew about Canada’s activities.
Shamima Begum and her two teenage friends were smuggled into Syria by a spy working for Canada – before Justin Trudeau’s nation then then conspired with the UK to cover up its role, a new book claims
The so-called Jihadi Bride was stripped of her British citizenship in 2019 after she fled Britain four years earlier to join the Islamic State (IS)
The Secret History of the Five Eyes, by journalist Richard Kerbaj, alleges that Canada finally admitted its involvement in the plot as bosses feared becoming exposed, then also managed to convince Britain to cover-up its role
Tasnime Akunjee, the lawyer for the Begum family, told the Times: ‘Britain has lauded its efforts to stop Isis and the grooming of our children by spending millions of pounds on the Prevent programme and online monitoring.
‘However, at the very same time we have been co-operating with a western ally, trading sensitive intelligence with them whilst they have effectively been nabbing British children and trafficking them across the Syrian border for delivery to Isis all in the name of intelligence-gathering.
‘The calculation here is that the lives of British children, and the risk of their death, is part of the algorithm of acceptable risk our western allies have taken.’
The book claims Mohammed al-Rashed, who was a human trafficker for the terrorists, was recruited as an agent by Canada when he applied for asylum at its embassy in Jordan.
Officials in Ottawa were said to also be concerned about its own young people being urged to join IS.
The book, as reported by the Times, claims: ‘The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) remained silent about the explosive allegations, taking refuge in the one thing that protects all intelligence agencies, including those within the Five Eyes, against potential embarrassment: secrecy.
‘The notion of saying nothing and hoping for the scandal to go away worked in Canada’s favour with regards to keeping the lid on how an agent for CSIS had smuggled western children and young adult volunteers into Syria while their British allies struggled to contain the flow of aspiring jihadists fleeing the UK to join Isis.
‘CSIS largely succeeded in covering up the role it had played in the recruitment and running of Rashed, and the agency’s deputy director was deployed to Ankara to beg forgiveness for failing to inform the Turkish authorities that they had been running a counterintelligence operation in their territory.’
A British government spokesman told the paper it does not comment on operational intelligence or security matters.
A CSIS spokesman added that the service could not publicly comment on or confirm or deny the specifics of its investigations, operational interests, methodologies and activities.
Begum left school in Bethnal Green, East London, to travel to Syria in 2015, where she married an ISIS fighter and gave birth to three children, all of whom died young.
Her youngest child died in the prison camp in Syria’s north-east in 2019.
She has made previous attempts to restore her British citizenship, but failed in her Supreme Court bid to return to the UK and fight her case in person.
The Supreme Court ruled on national security grounds that she cannot return to Britain to pursue an appeal against the decision. The law states a person’s citizenship can be stripped if they are deemed to be in the public interest.
Speaking to iNews from the camp while she awaits a trial by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces earlier this summer, she insisted that she wants to be ‘as British as possible’, but conceded that she expects she will spend the rest of her life in Syria.
‘That’s how I feel and that’s what it looks like,’ Begum said on the likelihood of her spending the rest of her life in the Middle East.
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