UK ordered to rethink block on return of mother and son in Syrian camp

LONDON — Judges have ordered British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to reconsider the decision to block the return of a severely disabled mother currently detained in a Syrian camp with her young son.

The government has been forced into a rethink after being found to have acted unlawfully in the case for a second time, in a judgment seen by POLITICO after it was handed by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC).

“We note the court’s decision on this case and are considering the judgment,” a Home Office spokesperson said. “The government will always take the strongest possible action to protect our national security and our priority remains maintaining the safety and security of our citizens.”

The U.K. has taken a different approach from nations like France and Germany in resisting taking back women and children from northeast Syria who left to live under the extremist group ISIS. The U.S. has been urging allies to repatriate citizens on compassionate and counter-radicalization grounds.

“Layla,” as the mother in her 40s is pseudonymously known due to an anonymity order, is one of more than a dozen women and her children who have remained stranded in Syria since the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate was destroyed. She had traveled to Syria in 2014 with her husband, who’s now presumed dead.

Stripped of her citizenship, she is detained in the Al Roj camp with her British son, aged around 10. The boy has been her sole carer from a young age after she was injured by an airstrike in 2019.

Shrapnel is embedded in her neck, a stroke has caused a life-long neurological disability and she is paralyzed on her right side. A medical expert assesses that she is at risk of death without treatment and there is no prospect of her neurological defects improving.

The Home Office’s Special Cases Unit advised that there are “sufficient compassionate and compelling circumstances” to grant her re-entry to the U.K. — but the final decision lies with the home secretary. 

Successive ministers have prevented the mother’s return since she was deprived of her citizenship in 2017. The government has twice been criticized by the judiciary for delays in its handling of the case.

The court first ordered the government to reconsider the case in November 2024. The legal ruling shows Security Minister Dan Jarvis advised in July last year that an offer should be made to repatriate the child, but was unsure if he would take the risk of allowing Layla into the U.K.

Then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper ruled that, despite concern about the boy’s welfare she would take a “precautionary approach” in light of the “national security risk.”

British security service MI5 assessed that Layla, referred to as “T7” in the judgment, was a willing participant in the decision to travel to Syria and that she aligned with ISIS. The security service’s general assessment is that individuals who traveled to Syria to affiliate with ISIS represent a threat.

‘Gravity of the consequences’

Layla’s legal team, backed by the Reprieve charity, put forward three experts who argued her threat to the U.K. is minimal. In evidence to the court, former MI6 counter-terrorism director Richard Barrett argued it was hard to imagine she would “present an unmanageable threat to national security.” The judges noted this was not zero risk, however, even when taking into account the extent of her mental and physical impairment.

Sebastian Gorka has long argued that the U.K. must take back Britons in northeast Syria. | Jason Davis/Getty Images

The three-strong SIAC panel ruled that the government’s decision was “inadequately reasoned” and agreed with Layla that a “more rigorous examination” is necessary, considering “the gravity of the consequences.” 

They accepted that the home secretary can take a precautionary approach to avoid grave threats, but believed there was an “inadequate explanation for the secretary of state’s reliance on a precautionary approach in the circumstances of this case.” 

“It follows that the decision falls to be set aside, and a fresh decision will need to be made,” justice Karen Steyn wrote in the conclusion handed down last Tuesday. She cited national security reasons for not giving further details in the public judgment for why the application for review was allowed.

‘Incubators’

Donald Trump’s deputy assistant Sebastian Gorka has long argued that the U.K. must take back Britons in northeast Syria to aid the international fight against Islamic State.

At a high-level conference in September, Head of U.S. Central Command Brad Cooper argued that the terror cult remains significantly influential in detainee camps. He described them as being “incubators for radicalisation,” where 57 percent of detainees are children.

“Repatriating vulnerable populations before they are radicalized is not just compassion — it is a decisive blow against ISIS’s ability to regenerate,” he said. “Inaction is not an option. Every day without repatriation compounds the risk to all of us.”

One high-profile detainee of Al Roj is Shamima Begum, the woman who traveled to Islamic State territory from east London when she was 15. Mahmood has vowed to fight against Begum’s challenging of the decision to strip her of citizenship in the European Court of Human Rights.

Al Roj is controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. Reprieve estimates that there are around 15 British-born women remaining in Syrian camps, and around 30 British children.

France has accepted back 600 women and children from camps and prisons in northeast Syria since 2019, Germany 108 and the U.S. 38, according to a tracker by the Rights and Security International charity. Britain stands on 25, with 21 of them children.