Shamima Begum can't enter Bangladesh: foreign ministry

British citizen Shamima Begum, one of three east London schoolgirls who travelled to Syria to join ISIS in February 2015, has no Bangladeshi citizenship rights, the foreign ministry said in a statement today.

"The clear position of Bangladesh is that British citizen Shamima Begum has never been a citizen of Bangladesh; she has no rights in this regard. There is no scope to permit her any entry to Bangladesh," the ministry said.

Shamima Begum, of Bangladeshi descent, left for Syria to join ISIS in 2015. In February last year, she was discovered by journalists in a Syrian camp. She was nine months pregnant at the time and said she wanted to return to the UK; shortly afterwards she gave birth, reports The Guardian.

The same month the then home secretary of UK Sajid Javid informed her family that Shamima's British citizenship was being revoked. In March, her baby son Jarrah died.

After being moved to al-Roj, another camp in northern Syria, Begum initiated legal action remotely at the high court against the Home Office and against the decision of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, which hears challenges to decisions to remove British citizenship on national security grounds.

Shamima Begum, the woman who left Britain as a schoolgirl to join the Islamic State, could not effectively challenge the government's decision to deprive her of British citizenship while she was in a detention camp in northern Syria, the court of appeals was told.

At the start of a two-day online hearing, her lawyers challenged a ruling by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) this year that she has not been rendered stateless because she is entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship, The Guardian reported on June 11.