LONDON — The family of a British teenager who ran away to join the Islamic State group says she has given birth to a baby boy. The family’s lawyer said Sunday that 19-year-old Shamima Begum and her latest baby are in good health. Begum is living in a refugee camp in northern Syria and wants to return to Britain with her child. Begum was one of a group of schoolgirls from London’s Bethnal Green neighborhood who went to Syria to marry IS fighters in 2015 at a time when the group’s online recruitment program lured many impressionable young people to its self-proclaimed caliphate. She told The Times newspaper that her first two babies had died of illness and malnutrition. Her legal situation remains unclear. She may face charges for supporting the banned extremist group. Sign up for Daily Newsletters Manage Newsletters Copyright © 2021 The Washington Times, LLC.<doc-sep>LONDON — The 19-year-old woman who left Britain to join the Islamic State and who recently spoke out about wanting to return home has given birth to a boy in a refugee camp in Syria. The woman, Shamima Begum, had recently fled the last remaining village held by the terrorist group in Syria. In a televised interview with Sky News on Sunday, Ms. Begum asked to be allowed to return to Britain. As another woman cradled her newborn, Ms. Begum also defended her actions in Syria, saying she had only taken care of her husband and children and had never made propaganda for the Islamic State or encouraged others to travel to Syria. “I think a lot of people should have, like, sympathy toward me for everything I’ve been through,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was getting into when I left. And I just was hoping that maybe for the sake of me and my child, they let me come back. Because I can’t live in this camp forever. It’s not really possible.”<doc-sep>"Somebody who has spent a lot of time in the caliphate is likely to be radicalized, and women are as capable of committing terrorist acts as men," said NBC News security analyst Duncan Gardham. "It may be a difficult task to make sure she is not radicalized and ensure that she's not a threat." The stereotypical image of foreign fighter tends to be male, like Albert Berisha, a Kosovar man interviewed by NBC News last year who traveled to Syria to fight the government of Bashar al Assad and claims he accidentally fell in with an ISIS unit. Prosecuting returnees who have committed crimes with ISIS, however, raises issues about where to incarcerate them — without risking radicalizing other inmates — and what to do with them upon their release, Shiraz Maher, director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, at Kings College London, said in a tweet thread on Thursday. Again, it's not clear how deep Begum's involvement with ISIS went, but she should be treated no differently, in terms of the potential threat she poses the U.K., because she is pregnant, Gardham said. Last year, two sisters and their mother were jailed as part of an all-female terror cell that wanted to carry out an attack on British soil. In 2016, a British woman, Tareena Shakil, 26, was jailed for six years for taking her young son to Syria and joining ISIS. If there is evidence, Begum could be arrested for joining a banned terror group, or for merely deliberately staying in what the British government calls a "designated area" — essentially a war zone like Syria. Even if she is classified as a noncombatant, the importance of her merely being in Syria should not be dismissed, Maher said. Their presence in ISIS territory alone represented "a type of moral and propaganda victory for the group," he tweeted. "Don't underestimate how important that was." But whatever you think, there is very little public sympathy for those who voluntarily migrated to Islamic State. That strengthens the hand of our governments who are adopting a position of passivity towards this problem. They’re happy to embrace the omission. 27/ — Shiraz Maher (@ShirazMaher) February 14, 2019 Her legal status might be the easy bit. Morally, there has already been a wide public disagreement in Britain about whether Begum can and should be rehabilitated back into society. In 2015, she was widely portrayed as the 15-year-old victim of online brainwashing, someone who needed to be saved from the clutches of a murderous death-cult. Now, her unapologetic interview in The Times has led many to say that she should be left to her own fate. Security minister Ben Wallace pointed out that as a British citizen Begum had the right to return to the U.K. However he said she would at least be investigated by counterterror police and suggested that the public’s safety would take priority. "I'm not putting at risk British people's lives to go and look for terrorists or former terrorists in a failed state," he said on BBC radio early Thursday. British teenagers Amira Abase, Kadiza Sultana and Shamima Begum walking with luggage at Gatwick Airport, south of London, on Feb. 17, 2015. Metropolitan Police Service / AFP - Getty Images file Officially, it is U.K. policy to tell British women in this situation to get themselves to the nearest consulate to be repatriated. Unofficially, the government "would rather they did not come back," Gardham said. "They don't want jihadi brides back and they don't want jihadis back." This stands in contrast to the approach of the U.S., which has been more likely to take on and prosecute alleged terrorists, Gardham added. This difference in strategy has been seen in the case of El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, two surviving members of an ISIS execution squad known as "The Beatles," who have been stripped of their British citizenship and could be extradited to the U.S. for prosecution. Sir Mark Rowley, former head of British counterterrorism policing, agrees the U.K. will likely display a passive attitude toward Begum. "I don't imagine the Foreign Office will be rushing into Syria to try and get hold of her," he told BBC radio Thursday morning. If Begum were to return and be arrested, the problems would not stop there. "I think actually the biggest challenge would be if she did come back," Sir Peter Fahy, the former head of Britain's counterterrorism program Prevent, told BBC radio. "How the local police would keep her safe and how it would be ensured she would not be some sort of lightning rod," he added, "both for right-wing extremists and Islamic extremists, and that she wouldn't somehow try to justify her position and what she did."<doc-sep>
A teenager who fled the United Kingdom to join the Islamic State said people should be sympathetic toward her after her family revealed the 19-year-old gave birth to a baby boy in Syria. Shamima Begum, who has been living in Syria for the past four years, gave birth at a refugee camp and she and the baby are in good health, her family said in a statement. "We, the family of Shamima Begum, have been informed that Shamima has given birth to her child; we understand that both she and the baby are in good health,” the family’s lawyer said, according to Sky News. "As yet we have not had direct contact with Shamima, we are hoping to establish communications with her soon so that we can verify the above." UK OFFICIAL VOWS TO PREVENT RETURN OF BRITONS WHO BACKED ISIS Begum revealed to The Times newspaper that she wants to return to the U.K. after spending four years in Syria. She was one of a group of schoolgirls from London’s Bethnal Green neighborhood who went to the country to marry ISIS fighters in 2015. She told the newspaper that she was pregnant twice and gave birth to two babies, but they died of starvation and illness. Before she gave birth to her third child, Begum said she wanted to raise the child in Britain with her family. She told Sky News on Sunday that she lived as a housewife since 15 while she was married to a Dutch ISIS fighter and insisted she “never did anything dangerous.” “I think a lot of people should have sympathy toward me for everything I have been through. I didn't know what I was getting into when I left,” she told Sky News. "I was hoping that maybe for the sake of me and my child they'd [U.K. government officials] let me come back. Because I can't live in this camp forever." CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP Begum said U.K. authorities didn’t have “any evidence” to prove she participated in ISIS activities. "When I went to Syria I was just a housewife for the entire four years. Stayed at home, took care of my kids,” she added. “I never did anything dangerous. I never made propaganda. I never encouraged people to come to Syria." Her legal situation remains unclear. She may face charges for supporting the banned extremist group. The Associated Press contributed to this report.