Daily US Times: The UK’s court of appeal has ruled that Shamima Begum should be allowed back into the UK to fight the government’s decision to remove her citizenship.
Ms Begum was one of three schoolgirls who left London when she was 15 to join the Islamic State group in Syria in 2015. She is now 20.
After she was found in a refugee camp in 2019, her citizenship was revoked by the Home Office on security grounds.
At that time, her family said they were “disappointed” with the decision and were considering “all legal avenues” to challenge it.
Ms Begum had said she wanted to return home. She was found in a Syrian refugee camp in February last year after reportedly leaving Baghuz – IS’s last stronghold – and gave birth to a son at the weekend.
She said in an interview with the BBC that she never sought to be an IS “poster girl” and now simply wished to raise her child quietly in the UK.
The Court of Appeal said Ms Begum had been denied a fair hearing because she could not make her case from the camp.
The Home Office, in reaction to the ruling, said the decision was “very disappointing” and it would “apply for permission to appeal”.
The judgement means the government must now find a way to allow Ms begum to appear in court in London despite repeatedly saying it would not assist removing her from Syria.
Ms Begum’s solicitor Daniel Furner said: “Ms Begum has never had a fair opportunity to give her side of the story. She is not afraid of facing British justice, she welcomes it. But the stripping of her citizenship without a chance to clear her name is not justice, it is the opposite.”
Shamima Begum had argued that the British government’s decision to strip her citizenship was unlawful because it left her stateless.
According to international law, it is only legal to revoke someone’s citizenship if an individual is entitled to citizenship of another country.
Last month, her lawyer also argued at a hearing at the Court of Appeal that Ms Begum, who remains in the camp in northern Syria, could not effectively challenge the decision while she was barred from returning to the UK.
A tribunal ruled in February that the decision to remove Ms Begum’s citizenship was lawful because she was “a citizen of Bangladesh by descent” at the time. Ms Begum is understood to have a claim to Bangladeshi nationality through her mother.
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