Filmmaker who met Shamima Begum claims she is 'playing the victim'

‘I am convinced she is bitter and twisted’: Filmmaker who met and shared texts with ISIS bride Shamima Begum – and at first felt sorry for her – claims she is ‘playing the victim card in an attempt to get back to the UK’

• Filmmaker who has interviewed Shamima Begum says she is ‘playing the victim’
• The ‘adventure tourist’ said he felt sorry for the ISIS bride, but no longer does 
• Andrew Drury has described Begum as ‘bitter and twisted’ and ‘manipulative’

A British filmmaker who has met and interviewed ISIS bride Shamima Begum numerous times said that he first felt sorry for her, but now believes she is ‘playing the victim card in an attempt to get back to the UK’.

‘Adventure tourist’ Andrew Drury, who used WhatsApp to speak to the 23-year-old before numerous visits, said that he is convinced the ISIS bride is ‘bitter and twisted’.

He has travelled to Syria’s Al-Roj camp to speak to Begum multiple times after she left the UK in 2015 with two school friends.

Mr Drury has now said that he sees her as manipulative, after she criticised the war in Ukraine for shifting the focus from her plight, said she no longer feels sad about the death of her children, and repeatedly asked for Western clothes.

Andrew Drury, 56, who visited Shamima Begum in the Al-Roj camp in northeast Syria, said he previously felt sorry for the 23-year-old

Mr Drury pictured hugging Begum after an interview in June 2021. He now said he feels ‘guilty’ about the hug

At 15-years-old, Begum, who was born in East London, left school in Bethnal Green for Syria in 2015. Pictured in Syria

Shamima Begum jihadi bride case set to cost taxpayers more than £5m, experts warn

The legal case involving jailed jihadi bride Shamima Begum is likely to cost taxpayers more than £5million, according to experts.

Lawyers acting for Begum, 21 – who was 15 when she and two school friends fled Britain for Syria with two school friends – are now planning to launch a new court case in November, arguing she should be allowed back to Britain on the grounds that she was trafficked.

Their claims appeared to have been strengthened last week when a new book claimed that an Islamic State (IS) people smuggler who was at the time working for Canadian intelligence helped Begum and her two friends Kadiza Sultana, then 16, and Amira Abase, 15 at the time, to travel from Istanbul to the Syrian border in 2015.

However, official sources said last night that the Government will robustly defend its decision to strip Begum of her British citizenship.

One insider said: ‘All the recent coverage shows that she left the UK for Syria willingly.’

Begum’s first court bid to return to Britain was launched months after then Home Secretary Sajid Javid stripped her of citizenship in February 2019 because she was considered a threat to national security.

Her case, which started at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), has since been heard at the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, which upheld Mr Javid’s decision.

Legal experts believe that the cost of the case – in which Begum received legal aid – has already cost more than £2million.

Paul Fulcher, who runs specialist firm Legal Costs Experts, said: ‘You have to remember that some of these barristers can charge up to £1,000 per hour and this case has gone on for almost two years through several courts.

‘If the whole process starts again and ends up at the Supreme Court, the whole thing could cost taxpayers upwards of £5million.’

The new book, The Secret History of the Five Eyes by author Richard Herbaj, claims that an IS people smuggler called Mohammed Al-Rasheed helped Begum cross the border. But, according to the book, he was also working for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), who informed Scotland Yard.

Although lawyers for Begum, originally from Bethnal Green, East London, are calling for a public inquiry, one Government source said that Al-Rasheed’s alleged involvement does not change the fact that Begum was radicalised in Britain and made up her mind to go to Syria.

He said: ‘All the indications are that she and her friends were radicalised in Tower Hamlets. In her school, Bethnal Green Academy, at least nine of them became radicalised together, and tried to go to Syria.

‘There was local element radicalising them, and there was an online element. This does not look like trafficking to me.’

The Home Office said last night: ‘It is our long-standing policy that we do not comment on operational intelligence or security matters.’ 

At 15-years-old, Begum, who was born in East London, left school in Bethnal Green for Syria in 2015. Ten days after arriving, she was married to convicted terrorist Yago Riedijk. 

There she gave birth to three children, all of whom died young. Her youngest child died in the prison camp in Syria’s north-east in 2019. 

In July, the British filmmaker called for Britain to ‘bring home’ the families of ISIS fighters who are being held in Syrian camps because they are ‘our problem’.

He said that he felt ‘sorry’ for Begum and had formed a close relationship with other foreign jihadi brides at the Syrian camp.

Mr Drury said at the time that the UK has a responsibility to bring British jihadi brides like Begum and their children ‘back home’ because it was not fair to leave them ‘to be a danger to the Syrians and the Kurds’ who have ‘enough danger to deal with already’. 

However his view has since changed, and believes that Begum is a ‘manipulative personality playing the victim card in an attempt to get back to the UK’. 

He added that he feels ‘guilty’ about giving Begum a hug.  

‘After extensive face-to-face meetings and a slew of bizarre text messages, I am convinced she is a bitter, twisted character with deep psychological problems,’ he wrote in The Sun. 

Mr Drury said that he was ‘floored’ when she told him that the death of her three children no longer makes her sad, and that she had ‘moved on’.

This, he said, began to change his view that Begum is a victim.

It comes as the terrorism watchdog warned that terror suspects such as Begum could be treated like victims if they exploit modern slavery laws.

Jonathan Hall QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, told the Times about his concern over the view that any child recruited to a terrorist organisation was ‘automatically’ a victim.

Prior to his last visit in June, Mr Drury described how the ISIS bride said that her case has been ‘pushed aside’ due to the war in Ukraine. 

‘Shamima had again lowered my opinion of her. She did not care about the suffering of the people of Ukraine. She was more bothered that it was taking the news spotlight away from her,’ Mr Drury wrote. 

He said that on first meeting Begum, he viewed her as a trafficking victim, describing her as a ‘simple girl’.

But throughout his communication with her, this view changed.

Mr Drury now sees her as ‘sharp and clever’, using her intelligence to her advantage, and trying to ‘manipulate’ him. 

He believes that the ‘only reason’ she would talk to him is because Mr Drury showed her footage from Dark Tourist, a Netfix show he had been in.

He said that part of Begum’s ‘manipulation’ included requests for Western clothes, including jeans, a hoodie and sports bras. 

Mr Drury explained that he bought the clothing in the hopes it would prompt the ISIS bride into revealing more about ‘why and how she went to Syria’. 

Mr Drury said that the camp where Begum is living feels like a ‘village’ and does not compare to ‘families in Syria and Iraq who are starving and still living in homes blown up by IS, with plastic sheets over the windows and doors’.

These, he said, were victims of ISIS. 

He added that fresh speculation that she was smuggled into Syria by a Canadian spy seemed ‘implausible’. 

Last week, explosive claims were made in a new book that the so-called Jihadi Bride was smuggled into Syria by a spy working for Canada – before Justin Trudeau’s nation then conspired with the UK to cover up its role.

Drury previously said that he felt sorry for Begum (pictured together)

The revelations claimed the now-23-year-old was trafficked into the Middle East by a double agent, on the payroll of both IS and Canadian intelligence.

But officials in Ottawa are then said to have kept quiet, even as Scotland Yard ran a huge, international search for Begum, and her friends Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, according to The Secret History of the Five Eyes.

Five Eyes is an intelligence sharing alliance, formalised during the Cold War, between the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The book, by journalist Richard Kerbaj, alleges that Canada finally admitted its involvement in the plot as bosses feared becoming exposed, then also managed to convince Britain to cover-up its role.

It sparked calls for an inquiry into claims the Met and the government knew the alleged people smuggler was responsible for helping Begum and her two fellow schoolgirls join ISIS while also working as a double agent. 

Tasnime Akunjee, the lawyer for the Begum family, told the Times: ‘Britain has lauded its efforts to stop Isis and the grooming of our children by spending millions of pounds on the Prevent programme and online monitoring. 

‘However, at the very same time we have been co-operating with a western ally, trading sensitive intelligence with them whilst they have effectively been nabbing British children and trafficking them across the Syrian border for delivery to Isis all in the name of intelligence-gathering.

‘The calculation here is that the lives of British children, and the risk of their death, is part of the algorithm of acceptable risk our western allies have taken.’

Begum has made previous attempts to restore her British citizenship, but failed in her Supreme Court bid to return to the UK and fight her case in person.

The Supreme Court ruled on national security grounds that she cannot return to Britain to pursue an appeal against the decision. The law states a person’s citizenship can be stripped if they are deemed to be in the public interest.

Speaking to iNews from the camp while she awaits a trial by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces earlier this summer, she insisted that she wants to be ‘as British as possible’, but conceded that she expects she will spend the rest of her life in Syria. 

MailOnline has attempted to contact Shamima Begum’s UK lawyers for comment. 

Terror suspects like Shamima Begum will be treated like VICTIMS if they exploit modern slavery laws, watchdog warns amid claims Met Police covered for ‘Canadian spy’ who smuggled ISIS bride into Syria 

Terror suspects like Shamima Begum could be treated like victims if they exploit modern slavery laws, the terrorism watchdog warned last night.

Explosive claims in a new book that the so-called Jihadi Bride was smuggled into Syria by a spy working for Canada – before Justin Trudeau’s nation then conspired with the UK to cover up its role – emerged this week.

It sparked calls for an inquiry into claims the Met and the government knew the alleged people smuggler was responsible for helping Begum and her two fellow schoolgirls join ISIS while also working as a double agent.

Now, Jonathan Hall QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, says the definition of modern slavery is so wide that terror suspects such as Begum herself could even be regarded as victims by authorities.

He told the Times of his concern over the view that any child recruited to a terrorist organisation was ‘automatically’ a victim.

Begum left school in Bethnal Green, East London, to travel to Syria in 2015, where she married an ISIS fighter and gave birth to three children, all of whom died young

Mr Hall said deciding whether or not Begum was a victim should not be the key issue when her bid to reclaim British citizenship returns to court in November.

He added that assessing the risk she poses was a more crucial question than the circumstances in which she travelled to Syria. 

‘The definition and the way in which the law is applied is over broad,’ he said.

Mr Hall voiced particular concerns with the idea that a child recruited to a terrorist organisation was automatically a victim, ‘if they did so entirely of their own free will’.

‘It is at odds with the fact that children are not generally seen as victims when they commit other crimes, just because someone suggests they should do so,’ he added.

Jonathan Hall QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, says the definition of modern slavery is so wide that terror suspects could even be regarded as victims by authorities

Fresh revelations came to light this week, claiming the now-23-year-old Begum was trafficked into the Middle East by a double agent, on the payroll of both IS and Canadian intelligence.

But officials in Ottawa are then said to have kept quiet, even as Scotland Yard ran a huge, international search for Begum, and her friends Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, according to The Secret History of the Five Eyes.

Five Eyes is an intelligence sharing alliance, formalised during the Cold War, between the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The book, by journalist Richard Kerbaj, alleges that Canada finally admitted its involvement in the plot as bosses feared becoming exposed, then also managed to convince Britain to cover-up its role.

In response to the claims, calls have been made for an inquiry into what the police and intelligence services knew about Canada’s activities.

Begum left school in Bethnal Green, East London, to travel to Syria in 2015, where she married an ISIS fighter and gave birth to three children, all of whom died young.

Her youngest child died in the prison camp in Syria’s north-east in 2019. 

She has made previous attempts to restore her British citizenship, but failed in her Supreme Court bid to return to the UK and fight her case in person.

The Supreme Court ruled on national security grounds that she cannot return to Britain to pursue an appeal against the decision. The law states a person’s citizenship can be stripped if they are deemed to be in the public interest. 

Speaking to iNews from the camp while she awaits a trial by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces earlier this summer, she insisted that she wants to be ‘as British as possible’, but conceded that she expects she will spend the rest of her life in Syria. 

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