Bethnal Green Schoolgirl’s passport confiscated

A High Court judge has ruled to take away passport off a Bethnal Green Academy schoolgirl to stop her joining ISIL.
The 16-year-old is a student at Bethnal Green Academy and is believed to be close friends with four other students who have already travelled to Syria.  They are believed to have wed Islamic State fighters.
High Court Family Division Judge Mr Justice Hayden heard that the GCSE student may have been “intimately involved in certain steps taken” by the first of the school’s pupils to head to IS-controlled territory.
Justice Hayden also ruled that her sisters’ passports must be taken away too – and only returned for approved trips abroad. The same judge has already passed orders to stop five other children from the school going to Syria.
The judge ordered that the identity of the “impressive and intelligent” girl must remain secret at least until she is 18 so that she can finish her childhood and complete her education in peace. He said he had found the girl, who sat in court dressed in black, “to be a very impressive young woman: intelligent, committed to her family and to both her sisters.” Her father told him through an interpreter she was expecting her GCSE results this week, and among the A-level subjects she was due to study were English and history, as well as sociology and possibly Bengali.
The judge said he had studied English and history, adding: “Who knows, one day she might be sitting in this chair – I would like to think she could. “This is a strong family unit which cares for each other and puts great priority on personal accomplishment and academic achievement.” The judge said the family should not regard the measures being taken as a punishment and the passports would be made available for travel if their travel plans were accepted by the counter-terrorism unit.
He said: “This strikes me as a very minor infringement into their family life in order to prevent the possibility of a very grave ill.” During the hearing, Chris Barnes, representing the local authority, described how concerns were first raised last December after a pupil from the Bethnal Green school travelled to Syria.
Seven children in particular were interviewed about the fact she had travelled, and some engaged with the Channel programme set up to spot signs of radicalisation. Then three of the seven – Amira Abase, Kadiza Sultana, and Shamima Begum – travelled together to Syria in February, and action had to be taken to prevent others from leaving the UK.
Mr Barnes said the sixteen-year-old in court today was “intimately involved in certain steps taken by the girl who travelled in December, but at this stage there is no finding on how much she knew”.
Recent reports on Amira Abase, Kadiza Sultana, and Shamima Begum have suggested they are being trained as suicide bombers and at least two of them have been married to jihadi fighters.