https://arab.news/8xz2j
- Andrew Drury: “They are our problem and we should be dealing with our own mess”
- It is unfair for Britain to allow them “to be a danger to the Syrians and the Kurds”
LONDON: Britain must “bring home” the brides and children of Daesh fighters who are being held in Syrian camps because they are “our problem,” a filmmaker has said.
Andrew Drury, 56, who regularly visits the Kurdish-run Al-Roj camp in northeast Syria, said 22-year-old Shamima Begum, who fled Britain when she was 15 to join Daesh, should be brought home.
She attracted widespread attention in Britain and overseas after The Times released an interview with her in 2019 in which she refused to apologize for her role in supporting the so-called caliphate.
She has since apologized and committed to return to the UK, but former Home Secretary Sajid Javid removed her British citizenship.
Drury said the UK has a responsibility to repatriate British Daesh brides, such as Begum, and their children.
They must “come home” because it is unfair for Britain to allow them “to be a danger to the Syrians and the Kurds,” who have “enough danger to deal with already,” he added. “They are our problem and we should be dealing with our own mess.”
Referring to the Daesh brides, he said: “I don’t think the wider international community knows what to do with them.”
Last year, Save the Children warned that the children of Daesh fighters were “wasting away” in Al-Roj and Al-Hol camps in northeast Syria.
In September, the charity said the UK had repatriated just four of the approximately 60 children born to British brides in those camps.