Two More Jihadi Brides Stripped of UK Citizenship

TOPSHOT - A fighter with the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) keeps watch near vei
FADEL SENNA/AFP/Getty
Victoria Friedman

Two Muslim extremist sisters who left the UK to become jihadi brides have been stripped of their British citizenship.

Reema Iqbal, 30, and her 28-year-old sister, Zara, who have five sons between them under the age of eight, have had their British nationality removed whilst they reside at a Syrian detention camp, according to legal sources speaking to The Sunday Times.

The sisters left their Canning Town, London, home in 2013 to marry jihadists linked to the filmed executions of Western hostages by Mohammed Emwazi, also known as Jihadi John, who was later “evaporated” in a U.S. drone strike in 2015. The Iqbals’ husbands were later killed in fighting.

The sisters’ parents are from Pakistan, so it is possible that, like in the case of Bangladeshi-heritage Shamima Begum, they are now considered to be citizens of their parents’ homeland.

However, the five children, two of whom were born in the United Kingdom, are all expected to be considered British citizens.

Reema Iqbal told The Telegraph last month that she had hoped to return to the UK, saying she had been “honest” with security services when they interviewed her, adding, “If I face court, fine, but take me back to the UK, that’s where I’m from.”

These are expected to be second and third jihadi brides recently stripped of their citizenship after unrepentant Islamic State supporter Shamima Begum had her British papers removed last month.

Far-left Labour MPs have attacked Conservative Home Secretary Sajid Javid for his decision to revoke 19-year-old Begum’s citizenship, when weeks later her newborn son Jarrah, who was named after an Islamist warlord at the request of her Dutch jihadi husband, died in a Syrian refugee camp.

Sky News reported Monday that they had seen a letter sent by the Begum family lawyer to the home secretary asking him to reconsider his decision in light of her child’s death as “an act of mercy.”

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt is now said to be working on plans to bring back the children of British fighters and brides, with former justice minister and Remainer Phillip Lee saying that children and jihadi brides should be allowed to return because “we have a moral responsibility to these people.”

Meanwhile, media sources have been reporting that many Islamic State brides currently in Syrian refugee camps or detention centres remain staunch supporters of the terror group, with one defending the rape of Yazidi women and keeping them as sex slaves as is says “in the Quran” that prisoners of war are “property.”

One 60-year-old woman told AFP that the Islamic State will return because boys are taught to fight from a young age, saying, “The caliphate will not end, because it has been ingrained in the hearts and brains of the newborns and the little ones,” while another woman in a refugee camp said, “We will seek vengeance, there will be blood up to your knees.”

Questions have also been raised recently over the vetting of the some 400-returning British jihadists after Samiun Rahman, 28, a minicab controller from London who was allowed to return to the UK after he was believed to have received militant training in Syria, is reportedly awaiting trial in India on terror charges.

Allegedly the highest-ranking British member of al-Qaeda, The Times reports that Indian authorities believe he was sent by the head of al-Qaeda in Syria, Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani, to set up a terrorist cell in Delhi.

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