Ahmed Ali, Father Of ISIS Bride, Shamima Begum Reacts To Daughter’s Plea
Ahmed Ali, is the father of Shamima Begum, the unrepentant Jihadi bride who left Britain to join ISIS fighters in Syria.
Her father, a retired tailor came to Britain in 1975 and married Begum’s mother, Asma, seven years later. They settled in Bethnal Green, East London, and had four daughters, but from the mid- 1990s, he began dividing his time between Britain and Bangladesh, where he married a second wife.
He last saw his youngest daughter on a visit to the UK two months before she fled to Syria with school friends, Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase in March 2015.
Speaking to DailyMail, Ali says that he backs Home Secretary, Sajid Javid’s decision to strip his daughter of her British citizenship.
Speaking to the media for the first time, Ahmed Ali, 60, said:
“I know they [the British Government] don’t want to take her back, and in this I don’t have a problem. I know she is stuck there [in Syria] but that’s because she has done actions that made her get stuck like this. I am on the side of the Government.”
Ali, whose comments are in stark contrast to the pleas of Begum’s British-based relatives, who are asking the government to allow her return to the country, added:
“I can’t say whether it is right or wrong, but if the law of the land says that it is correct to cancel her citizenship, then I agree.”
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Ali said he had been shocked by his daughter’s lack of remorse about joining ISIS during a series of media interviews at a Syrian refugee camp last week.
Begum, who gave birth to a son, Jarrah, last Sunday, pleaded to be allowed back to the UK but caused outrage by failing to apologize for joining the terror group and arguing that the 2017 bombing of the Manchester Arena by an Islamic extremist was justified.
Ali stated further:
“If she at least admitted she made a mistake then I would feel sorry for her and other people would feel sorry for her. But she does not accept her wrong.”
He insisted she had shown no sign of being radical.
“I never saw anything of concern in her at the time. She was as usual, normal. She never used to pray regularly, she was not that Islamic-minded.”
Javid sparked controversy last week by stripping Begum, 19, of her British nationality on the grounds that she is eligible for citizenship of Bangladesh through her mother.
However, Begum’s relatives in Britain have warned the Home Secretary that they will challenge his decision in the courts.
Source: Dailymail