FROM a position of my heart’s loathing and protest at the prospect of Shamima Begum being repatriated with her child to Britain, my head has intervened following what has transpired since. A number of real concerns come to mind.

Raising two children over four years; doesn’t this suggest the likelihood that Begum was in reality a camp follower rather than a combatant? Did history record Cumberland’s camp followers as responsible for the war crimes and butchery of rebels by the Red Coats and their allies following the defeat of Prince Charles’s army at Culloden?

When Begum speaks, shouldn’t we remember that she does so in the indoctrination of ISIS, and in a place of no protection from the Daesh influences that assuredly surround her in the camp she has no choice but to live in? And wasn’t she encouraged to speak without adequate representation while confronted with aggressive questioning from disreputable journalists charged with pandering to the baying hounds in their readership? What chance did she have to give any rational and measured response, other that a knee-jerk response from the core of her indoctrination in the face of the verbal assault on her? Isn’t it a pity that she wasn’t mature enough to just refuse to answer the questions put to her, as we know most of our leading Westminster politicians do?

Britain is supposed to be proud of its core value of innocence until proven guilty. Doesn’t this episode show how quickly we would abandon its principle when driven by a media cranking up its circulation among a population of sheeple eager to be led?

No wrongdoing has been proven against Begum. It is alleged that she stole her sister’s passport and joined what according to British Law is a proscribed organisation. For both of these allegations shouldn’t she be brought back here and properly tried according to British law, with her right to defend against the charges, a right all Britons enjoy?

And isn’t there a real value for intelligence agencies to debrief this young woman in order to better understand the fanatic forces that seem determined to destroy our values and way of life? The very values we now seem so eager to destroy of our own accord? Aren’t we missing an opportunity to develop our strategy and tactics against inherently evil forces?

Our justice system has sought to reform known killers like the Bulger murderers, even providing new identities to help them do so, yet a camp follower against whom nothing has been proven is somehow beyond redemption? How is this British justice?

For me the huge wake-up call is that our Home Secretary can play both judge and jury and unilaterally and arbitrarily revoke anyone’s UK citizenship. If we do subscribe to the rule of law, shouldn’t the Home Secretary be required to present before an independent judge, make his case, allow a defence of the charges, and for the judge to weigh the evidence according to the rule of law and reach a determination?

Should any government official have such fascist control over a process that we all depend on to be administered fairly? Doesn’t this whole episode beggar belief in the context of Britain’s supposed sense of fairness? Hasn’t this Home Secretary reduced our credibility to the low level of the dark forces we face?

The British Home Office is clearly out of control. Just another matter we could handle so much better in independent Scotland.

Jim Taylor
Edinburgh

I WRITE this letter from Cape Town, South Africa, where I’m currently on holiday, taking a break from the madness of Brexit and re-charging my batteries for the continued fight for Scottish independence.

I lived here for nearly two years after emigrating with my wife and three children in 1990. We arrived shortly after Nelson Mandela had been released from a 27-year jail sentence, imposed for fighting the brutal apartheid system.

Only a matter of months later apartheid was repealed, and in 1994 Mandela became his country’s first black head of state. He had always been grateful to Glasgow, and Scotland, for being the first to see him as a statesman, and not a terrorist.

I remember the excitement and positivity I felt during that period, and I would dearly love to experience that feeling again, when Scotland finally becomes an independent nation once more, free from the oppression of our Westminster masters.

Many thousands of people have been attending the regular independence marches around Scotland, myself included, and I would urge others to join us this year. Mandela wrote about his long walk to freedom and I intend to follow his lead, and will either march or ride my motorbike at as many of the marches as possible, until we achieve our goal.

I’ll leave you with a few of the great man’s quotes which I believe will be relevant in the coming months: “May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears”, “A winner is a dreamer who never gives up”, “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others”, “Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom”

Roy Mackie
Kinghorn