IS Bride to lose UK citizenship

[El_Machinae]

I think she should be tried in a court and punished according to the law of the land.

I certainly don't believe that. I would rather see her rescued from the Syrian justice system. It's hypocritical, but it's because I don't really trust their human rights record. It's also hypocritical, because I think there are more deserving refugees that will be damaged because effort is wasted on rescuing her. But I do worry that her recovery into the UK will result in a punishment vastly less than should be maintained as a precedent. As I said, I think of this as an edge case.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I certainly don't believe that. I would rather see her rescued from the Syrian justice system. It's hypocritical, but it's because I don't really trust their human rights record. It's also hypocritical, because I think there are more deserving refugees that will be damaged because effort is wasted on rescuing her. But I do worry that her recovery into the UK will result in a punishment vastly less than should be maintained as a precedent. As I said, I think of this as an edge case.

I think bad laws are easily made but frequently harder to repeal. The power to remove peoples nationality at the discretion of the Home Secretary wasn't intended for cases like this but its scope has been steadily extended.
It took time for the government to draft and pass an appropriate law with safeguards etc but it has been done. A sentence of up to 10 years doesn't seem lenient to me.

 

[NovaKart]

I just came across this in a book. According to a 2006 law the Home Secretary does have the right to revoke someone’s citizenship if that person is a dual national and is deemed a security threat.

 

[brennan]

Begum doesn't hold dual nationality.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I just came across this in a book. According to a 2006 law the Home Secretary does have the right to revoke someone’s citizenship if that person is a dual national and is deemed a security threat.

If they are a serious threat to national security yes, and its been extended to include people convicted of a serious crime. Even if Begum held dual nationality which she doesn't I don't think either of those 2 criteria can be said to apply.

 

[El_Machinae]

A sentence of up to 10 years doesn't seem lenient to me.

I have already asked if you thought she would receive a non lenient sentence. It's a subjective question, but helps clarify the conversation.

I agree with the majority of your paragraph. As I said, I find it a weird Edge case. She tried to become a dual nationality, we just didn't recognize it

I think it is best that she remains a UK citizen, because we don't want to create a system where people can become stateless

 

[AmazonQueen]

I have already asked if you thought she would receive a non lenient sentence. It's a subjective question, but helps clarify the conversation.

I agree with the majority of your paragraph. As I said, I find it a weird Edge case. She tried to become a dual nationality, we just didn't recognize it

I think it is best that she remains a UK citizen, because we don't want to create a system where people can become stateless

Also, it would be hypocritical to turn her over to a government we've been halfheartedly trying to overthrow ourselves.
One lesson we ought to learn from our military adventures since 9/11 is if you're going to overthrow a government you have to be prepared to stick around for the long haul. The unstable messes we've left in the region are causing no end of problems for us now.

 

[Lexicus]

One lesson we ought to learn from our military adventures since 9/11 is if you're going to overthrow a government you have to be prepared to stick around for the long haul. The unstable messes we've left in the region are causing no end of problems for us now.

Ironically, 9/11 itself was a problem caused for us by the unstable mess we left in that region.

 

[El_Machinae]

Also, it would be hypocritical to turn her over to a government we've been halfheartedly trying to overthrow ourselves.
One lesson we ought to learn from our military adventures since 9/11 is if you're going to overthrow a government you have to be prepared to stick around for the long haul. The unstable messes we've left in the region are causing no end of problems for us now.

no disagreement. I don't think she should be left to the Syrian government

I also don't think she should receive a lenient sentence. It's a bad situation oh, there are no clear answers

 

[NovaKart]

U.S.-backed forces in Syria, holding thousands of foreign jihadists along with their wives and children, say they cannot keep them forever.

This quote comes from the Reuters article I linked to earlier on the Belgian women. It suggests to me that many if not most of these ISIS wives are held in camps controlled by the SDF, not the Syrian government, and that they would prefer their governments take them back. I don’t really know what the Syrian National government’s opinion on this is.

When Sajid Javid made his decision on Shamima I suppose they assumed she was also a Bangladeshi citizen.

 

[tjs282]

She tried to become a dual nationality, we just didn't recognize it

No. Her other 'official' nationality was originally claimed (by the UK gov) to be Bangladeshi, not "Dae'eshi"(?). But the Bangladesh gov counterclaims that she has never held that nationality, leaving her with only her British nationality — which Javid is now trying to remove (if he hasn't done it already...?) without the inconvenience of due process.

Yes, she burned her UK (child's) passport, but this was a symbolic gesture of her pledging allegiance to ISIS ('coincidentally' also ensuring that recruits were trapped, even if they later might have had second thoughts — though not in this particular case). That act had no bearing on her actual legal nationality, since — regardless of what they called themselves, or claimed — the ISIS/ISIL leadership was never in a position to offer 'citizenship' to anyone. That said though, any UK passport holder who destroys their UK-issued passport has in doing so quite possibly committed a criminal offence (property damage), since all UK passports are (AFAIK) legal documents which technically remain Crown property.

So that's possibly something else she could be charged with, along with "being a member of a proscribed/ illegal/ terrorist organisation" — a law which the UK has had on the books for decades, as a means of dealing with e.g. IRA-members or -affiliates who didn't actually carry out any violent attacks themselves, but 'only' aided and abetted those who did ('aiding and abetting' also being prosecutable under UK law...)

I certainly don't believe that. I would rather see her rescued from the Syrian justice system.

And as far as I understand things, so would AQ: she has maintained from the start of this thread that Begum should be tried in the UK, not Syria (or Bangladesh!).

Since making her stateless is actually illegal in the UK, according to the very law that Javid has tried to invoke, the woman is still at least de facto British (if not technically de jure at this point) and is therefore 'our' responsibility — however much we might wish to fob that off onto someone else.

Still, trying to fob off their collective responsibilities whenever possible (and also often when not) is something that Theresa May's government has been doing for years now (see the CFC Brexit-threads — now in their fifth exciting edition...)

 

[El_Machinae]

It's maybe not obvious, but I basically agree with all of that. I'm just observing that if ISIS had been more successful, then revoking her UK citizenship would be more viable. She tried, but failed, to trade her UK citizenship for an ISIS one.

I don't think that government efforts to strip her of UK citizenship will be successful. But I also don't think she will be jailed significantly

We can understand why both Bangladesh and the UK are trying to toss the potato to each other. As long as one of them accepts her citizenship, then she won't be stateless.

 

[NovaKart]

The UK has in the past revoked citizenship which opened the way toward either targeting now former British citizens in air strikes or sharing intel with the US to do the same, if I remember correctly.

There have also been people who fled their middle eastern countries like Egypt over involvement in radical Islam and sought asylum in the UK only to later turn cause trouble in the UK.

Even if their asylum claims are rejected they can’t always be sent back to their home countries but I I suppose the UK might want an out if these people became citizens.

It’s like how Norway ended up with Mellah Krekar, and can’t get rid of him though I don’t think he ever became a citizen

 

[Akka]

Unless she is mentally ill she would not see a beheading video then say I want to join ISIS. Some other things must have happened.

Circular logic here, where you take the conclusion as the premises.

But this is, like, a fundamental thing. Criminals, terrorists and disreputable but technically innocent hangers-on should get their hindparts shipped to their own country - and face courts there as applicable.

Actually, wrong.
The fundamental thing is that criminals are to be tried where they commit the crime, as they don't bring their own laws with them.
The only problem we have here is that the Assad regime can not be considered fit for a fair trial, that's all.

 

[AmazonQueen]

The UK has in the past revoked citizenship which opened the way toward either targeting now former British citizens in air strikes or sharing intel with the US to do the same, if I remember correctly.

There have also been people who fled their middle eastern countries like Egypt over involvement in radical Islam and sought asylum in the UK only to later turn cause trouble in the UK.

Even if their asylum claims are rejected they can’t always be sent back to their home countries but I I suppose the UK might want an out if these people became citizens.

It’s like how Norway ended up with Mellah Krekar, and can’t get rid of him though I don’t think he ever became a citizen

It took 8 years for the UK to deport Abu Qatada but the problem wasn't citizenship, it was getting an agreement that evidence obtained by torture wouldn't be used against him.

 

[brennan]

... and guess who was the Home Secretary who spend a lot of public money trying repeatedly to break the law over that case...