HOW AND WHY DID SHAMIMA BEGUM LOSE HER UK CITIZENSHIP?

Begum, now 23, is being held at the al-Roj camp, in Syria’s northeast, which is home to more than 2,000 people.

In this three-image combo of stills taken from CCTV, Kadiza Sultana, Shamima Begum and Amira Abase are seen at Gatwick Airport on February 23, 2015 [File: AP Photo/Metropolitan Police]

Why and how did Begum lose her UK citizenship?

Citizenship is a legal status that “means a person has a right to live in a state and that state cannot refuse them entry or deport them”, according to the Migration Observatory of the University of Oxford.

This status may be conferred at birth or, in some states, obtained “through naturalisation”.

In 2019, a British judge said, however, that British citizenship is “not an absolute entitlement for everyone. It can be removed by the Secretary of State, but not if to do so would render the subject stateless”.

In Begum’s case, a UK tribunal ruled in 2019 that removing her citizenship was lawful because Begum “holds Bangladeshi citizenship” by descent through her parents.

Bangladesh denied this and said she would not be allowed in the country.

“You are a British/Bangladeshi dual national who, it is assessed, has previously travelled to Syria and aligned with ISIL. It is assessed that your return to the UK would present a risk to the national security of the United Kingdom,” a letter sent to her family in 2019 by the Secretary of State’s Private Office read.

Begum has never held Bangladeshi nationality and has never visited Bangladesh – and officials in the South Asian nation have said they will not issue her citizenship.

“I have one citizenship … and if you take that away from me, I don’t have anything. I don’t think they are allowed to do that,” Begum told the BBC in 2019.

“This is a life-changing decision; they haven’t even spoken to me.”

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Three Court of Appeal judges ruled in 2020 that Begum should be allowed back into the UK to challenge the revocation.

However, the case was taken to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2021 that while Begum has a right to challenge the decision, she should do so from outside the UK due to “security concerns”.

Begum’s legal team accused the Home Office – the UK’s interior ministry – of failing to investigate whether she was a “child victim of trafficking”.

On February 2023, the judge ruled that a finding that Begum may have been trafficked was insufficient for her appeal to succeed.

“The implication, the outcome, that we face is that no British child who has been trafficked outside the UK will be protected by the British state if the home secretary invokes national security,” her lawyer Daniel Furner said after the decision.

A book released in August last year investigating intelligence sharing between the UK, Canada and other allies alleged that the Canadian agent’s role in Begum’s case was later covered up by the police and Britain’s security services.

The Secret History of the Five Eyes by Richard Kerbaj, a former security correspondent of The Sunday Times, prompted demands for an official inquiry into Begum’s case. Canada and the UK declined to comment on the allegations, as is routine for security issues involving intelligence agencies.

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Furner told reporters that his team “will be challenging the decision” of Wednesday’s ruling.

Begum will have to take the case directly to the Court of Appeal in London if she wishes to challenge the decision, according to legislation that covers the tribunal.

“Her lawyers have even suggested it could go to the European Court of Human Rights, too,” said Al Jazeera’s Nadim Baba, reporting from London.

“The government’s priority remains to maintain the safety and security of the UK, and we will robustly defend any decision made in doing so,” the spokesperson said.