IS bride stripped of British citizenship should have it restored, appeal court told
SHAMIMA Begum’s British citizenship should be restored because she cannot have a “fair and effective appeal” against the Government’s decision to strip her of it, the Court of Appeal has heard.
Ms Begum, now 20, was one of three east London schoolgirls who travelled to Syria to join socalled Islamic State (IS) in February 2015.
She was found, nine months pregnant, in a Syrian refugee camp in February last year, prompting then Home Secretary Sajid Javid to revoke her British citizenship.
Last year Ms Begum took legal action against the Home Office at the High Court and the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), a specialist tribunal which hears challenges to decisions to remove someone’s British citizenship on national security grounds.
In February SIAC ruled that the decision to revoke Ms Begum’s British citizenship did not render her stateless, and was therefore lawful, as she was “a citizen of Bangladesh by descent”.
The tribunal also found that Ms Begum “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”.
Ms Begum’s challenge to the
Home Office’s decision to refuse to allow her to enter the UK in order to effectively pursue her appeal was also rejected.
Opening Ms Begum’s case at a remote hearing yesterday, Tom Hickman QC said the key issue was whether the absence of “a fair or effective means of challenging the decision to deprive her of her British citizenship” made the decision unlawful.
He told the court: “It is a basic principle of our law that executive decisions cannot stand where the requirements of natural justice are not complied with.”
Mr Hickman said that “in the present case there is a manifest breach of natural justice”, and that Ms Begum’s appeal against the deprivation of her citizenship should be allowed because her appeal “cannot be pursued in a manner that satisfies even minimum requirements of fair procedure”.
Mr Hickman said Ms Begum’s case was “the first case in which SIAC has held that an appellant cannot have a fair and effective appeal”.
Mr Hickman pointed out that Ms Begum, who remains in the al-roj camp in Syria, was only 15 when she left the UK. He added: “The only things that are clear are that Shamima Begum was a child when she left the UK and had been influenced to do so.”
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 two-day hearing before Lord Justice Flaux, Lady Justice King and Lord Justice Singh is being live-streamed on the judiciary’s Youtube channel, and it is expected that the Court of Appeal will reserve its judgment to a later date.