The 24-year-old will not be allowed to challenge the removal of her British citizenship at the Supreme Court.
Shamima Begum will not be allowed to challenge the removal of her British citizenship at the Supreme Court, judges have ruled.
The 24-year-old hoped to overturn the government’s decision to revoke her citizenship on national security grounds after she travelled to Syria as a teenager to join the Islamic State group.
Justices at the UK’s highest court said Ms Begum could not appeal against an earlier Court of Appeal ruling as the grounds of her case “do not raise an arguable point of law”.
It was Ms Begum’s last chance to challenge the revocation of her citizenship within the UK legal system. But her lawyers told the BBC they would take the case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
Ms Begum, who left Bethnal Green, east London, with two schoolfriends in 2015, was later found in a Syrian refugee camp.
She married an Islamic State fighter soon after arriving and went on to have three children, none of whom survived.
Ms Begum was stripped of her British citizenship in 2019, leaving her stateless. She remains in a camp controlled by armed guards in northern Syria.
Last year, she lost her appeal against the decision to revoke her citizenship at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC).
Who is Shamima Begum and how can you lose your citizenship?
She then took her case to the Court of Appeal – where three judges unanimously dismissed her bid to regain British citizenship in February.
Then in March, Ms Begum lost an initial bid to challenge the removal of her citizenship at the Supreme Court.
Her remaining option was to ask the Supreme Court directly for permission to have her case heard.
However, on Wednesday three justices at the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the bid.
In a statement, Ms Begum’s legal team said it “will take every possible legal step” to restore her citizenship, including petitioning the ECHR in Strasbourg to hear her case.
It noted that, in their decision, justices found it was a matter for the European court to decide whether the process to deprive her of British citizenship should have factored in whether she was a potential victim of trafficking.
Her lawyers added: “It is a matter of the gravest concern that British women and children have been arbitrarily imprisoned in a Syrian camp for five years, all detained indefinitely without any prospect of a trial.
“All other countries in the UK’s position have intervened and achieved the return of their citizens and their children.”
The Shamima Begum Story podcast is available on BBC Sounds and a feature length documentary of the same name, is on BBC iPlayer (UK only).
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