BBC sparks outrage for 'giving terrorists a platform' as Shamima Begum lands ... trends now
The BBC was criticised today for 'giving terrorists a platform' after Shamima Begum landed a 10-part podcast to retrace her journey'.
The 23-year-old is heard at one point saying 'I'm just so much more than ISIS' and describing packing her bags with mint chocolate before heading to Syria to join the brutal death cult.
Critics accused the BBC of 'wasting licence fee payers' money' and said the families of ISIS victims would be 'mortified'. One tweeted: 'Trust the BBC to still have interest in this saga. Do we really want to know what this terrorist has done with her life. NO we don't!'
The BBC said the podcast would provide Ms Begum's 'full account' of 'what really happened' when she disappeared from London in 2015 to become a jihadi bride. But it insisted they were not allowing her to tell her story 'unchallenged', describing the podcast as a 'robust, public interest investigation'.
The BBC has released a 10-part podcast about Shamima Begum in which she tells her story of how she joined ISIS
In 2015, Begum (centre), then 15, and her school friends Kadiza Sultana (left), 15, and Amira Abase (right), 16, fled their East London homes to join IS. Her two companions are believed to have died while there
The BBC has released a 10-part podcast about Shamima Begum in which she tells her story of how she joined ISIS and about life in a refugee camp.
In 2015, Begum, then 15, and her school friends Kadiza Sultana, 15, and Amira Abase, 16, fled their East London homes to join IS.
Begum, now 23, was found in a refugee camp in 2019 and soon after the UK withdrew her citizenship and banned her from entering Britain.
She now lives at the al-Roj camp in northern Syria, run by the Syrian Democratic Forces, which she described as 'worse
