Ruling update:
- Shamima Begum has won a legal battle to be allowed to return home to fight the government’s decision to remove her UK citizenship.
- Begum should be allowed to return to the UK to challenge the deprivation of her British citizenship, senior judges have ruled.
Shamima Begum is one of three east London schoolgirls who travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State, she is set to find out whether her British citizenship should be restored after HM’s government removed her British Citizenship.
Begum, who is now 20-years-old, travelled to Syria in February 2015 and lived under IS rule for more than three years before she was found by western journalists, nine months pregnant, in a Syrian refugee camp in February last year.
At the time, the then home secretary Sajid Javid revoked her British citizenship on national security grounds later that month.
Begum took legal action against the Home Office and claimed the decision was unlawful because it rendered her stateless and exposed her to a real risk of death or inhuman and degrading treatment.
In February, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, a specialist tribunal which hears challenges to decisions to remove someone’s British citizenship on national security grounds.
They ruled the decision was lawful as Ms Begum was “a citizen of Bangladesh by descent” at the time of the decision.
The tribunal also found that she “cannot play any meaningful part in her appeal and that, to that extent, the appeal will not be fair and effective”, but ruled that “it does not follow that her appeal succeeds”.
Begum’s challenge to the Home Office’s decision to refuse to allow her to enter the UK to effectively pursue her appeal was also rejected.
Ms Begum’s barrister Tom Hickman QC told the Court of Appeal that removing his client’s British citizenship took away “the real possibility that she could return to the UK”.
Mr Hickman claims “exposing her to … the real risk of removal to Bangladesh or Iraq”, where Ms Begum faced “extra-judicial killing at the hands of the police” or “a wholly unfair and predetermined ‘trial’ and an immediate sentence of death”.
Today, Lord Justice Flaux, Lady Justice King and Lord Justice Singh are due to give a ruling on her appeal, which will be delivered remotely.
Sir James Eadie QC, representing the Home Office, said: “The fact that the appellant could not fully engage with the statutory appeal procedure was a result of her decision to leave the UK, travel to Syria against Foreign and Commonwealth Office advice and align with ISIL.
“This led to her being held in conditions akin to detention in a foreign state at the hands of a third party, the Syrian Defence Force.
“It was not the result of any action by the secretary of state and the deprivation decision did not have any causative impact on the appellant in this respect.”
The Court of Appeal is due to give its ruling at 10.30am on Thursday.
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Editor-in-Chief | Carl D. Pearson has been involved in British politics and media from an early age, with the key knowledge of what it takes to run a news organisation for the 21st century. Mr Pearson, as Editor-in-chief, is responsible for supervising the daily tasks of publishing media and content to UNN’s website and various platforms.
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