The 1-month-old baby son of ISIS bride Shamima Begum has died in a Syrian refugee camp. Begum left the U.K. in 2015 at the age of 15 and married Dutch citizen Yago Riedijk, who was an ISIS fighter. She pleaded with the U.K. government to return home to have her baby after leaving an ISIS stronghold. Instead, Home Secretary Sajid Javid stripped the young woman of her citizenship, leaving her stateless. At the time, he said Begum qualified for Bangladeshi citizenship from her mother, but Bangladesh indicated that she would not be granted citizenship because of her terrorist ties. Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, called the death of the infant a “stain on the conscience” of the current U.K. government. “It is against international law to make someone stateless,” she said, according to the Guardian. “And to leave a vulnerable young woman and an innocent child in a refugee camp, where we know infant mortality to be high, is morally reprehensible.” Abbott added, “What does it say about our government on International Women’s Day that it would allow hundreds of men to return to the UK from Syria and Iraq under similar circumstances, but strip citizenship from a young woman who was groomed as a minor? It is clear that society is not past blaming groomed young women for their fate.”
