‘Western spy’ took Shamima Begum to Syria

A spy working for Canadian intelligence smuggled Shamima Begum and her two friends from Bethnal Green into Syria and Britain later conspired with Canada to cover up its role, a book has claimed.

Scotland Yard was told that the teenagers were trafficked into Syria by a people-smuggler who was a double agent working for Islamic State and Canadian intelligence.

An inquiry was demanded last night as it emerged that Canada knew about the teenagers’ fate but kept silent while the Metropolitan Police ran a frantic, international search for the trio. Canada privately admitted its involvement only when it feared being exposed, and then successfully asked the British to cover up its role, the book claimed.

The scandal reopens the debate over stripping Begum of her British citizenship as it shows that an asset of western intelligence gave practical help for her journey to become a jihadi bride, even organising her bus tickets.

There was no mention that the British authorities knew how she was smuggled into Syria in last year’s Supreme Court judgment upholding the decision to bar her from returning to the UK. Begum, 23, remains in a camp in northern Syria. She is to renew her case at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission in November.

The alleged cover-up was detailed in The Secret History of the Five Eyes, by Richard Kerbaj, a former security correspondent of The Sunday Times. Five Eyes is the intelligence-sharing alliance between Britain, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The book is published tomorrow and is based on interviews with world leaders and more than 100 intelligence officials.

Begum was 15 when she travelled to Syria with Amira Abase, 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16, fellow pupils at Bethnal Green Academy, east London, in 2015.

She said she had “no regrets” when she was found by The Times in a refugee camp in Syria in 2019 as Isis’s self-styled caliphate was collapsing. She has since expressed regret and said she was groomed. She was stripped of her British citizenship by Sajid Javid, then home secretary, for being a threat to national security. Sultana was killed in a Russian air raid and Abase is missing.

The three girls were at the centre of a public appeal to trace them before they crossed the border from Turkey into Isis territory in Syria. The alarm was raised when it was discovered that they had flown from Gatwick to Istanbul.

Canada, which was worried about its own young people being urged to join Isis, had recruited Mohammed al-Rashed, a human trafficker for the terrorists, as an agent when he applied for asylum at the Canadian embassy in Jordan. Rashed is thought to have helped dozens more Britons and organised the travel of jihadists and their brides into Syria. He photographed their passports on the pretext that he needed proof of identity to buy domestic transport tickets then forwarded the images to his handler with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) at the Jordan embassy.

Kerbaj’s book claims that the Canadians were silent as the Metropolitan Police issued an urgent appeal asking anyone who had seen the teenagers to come forward. It is claimed that Canada realised that its cover could be blown when Turkey arrested Rashed in 2015 and found him in possession of travel documents, including bus tickets belonging to the British schoolgirls.

A Five Eyes source is quoted as saying: “The CSIS officers knew that Scotland Yard had a live investigation into the three schoolgirls and also knew that sooner or later the finger would point at them.”

CSIS officers organised to meet Commander Richard Walton, then the Met’s head of counterterrorism, to admit their agent’s involvement.

The Canadians could not have stopped the girl’s travel because by the time Rashed’s handler was told, they had already crossed the border, the book claims. However, it adds that Walton felt the Canadians’ visit to him was self-serving — that they were meeting him in the hope that any further inquiries into the girls’ journey to Syria would not result in the CSIS being questioned or held accountable.

The Met never publicly acknowledged the involvement of CSIS, and when lawyers for Begum’s family asked about Rashed they claimed they were stonewalled. A Met spokesman declined to respond to specific questions, saying: “We do not comment on matters relating to intelligence.”

Turkey went on to announce that it had arrested Rashed and that he claimed he worked for the Canadians.

“CSIS remained silent about the explosive allegations, taking refuge in the one thing that protects all intelligence agencies, including those within the Five Eyes, against potential embarrassment: secrecy,” the new book claims.

“CSIS largely succeeded in covering up the role it had played in the recruitment and running of Rashed, and the agency’s deputy director was deployed to Ankara to beg forgiveness for failing to inform the Turkish authorities that they had been running a counterintelligence operation in their territory.”

Tasnime Akunjee, lawyer for the Begum family, called for an inquiry into what the police and intelligence services knew. He said: “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.”

He said the revelations were of “crucial importance”, given that Begum had argued she was trafficked into Syria.

The CSIS said it could not comment on or confirm or deny the specifics of its investigations, operational interests, methodologies and activities.

A British government spokesman said: “It is our longstanding policy that we do not comment on operational intelligence or security matters.”