Begum – one of three east London schoolgirls who travelled to Syria to join ISIS – lost her UK passport after she was found, nine months pregnant, in a Syrian refugee camp in February last year.
Now 20, the Londoner left the UK in February 2015 and lived under ISIS rule for more than three years where she married a Dutch jihadi.
Their three children all died – the final baby perished in the camp where she was found after the caliphate fell – and she claims losing her British citizenship left her at risk of torture and ‘real risk of death’.
But today a tribunal, led by Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) president Mrs Justice Elisabeth Laing, delivered its ruling and found that the deprivation decision made by the Home Secretary Sajid Javid did not render her stateless.
The UK government successfully argued that under Bangladeshi law, Ms Begum, whose parents are from the country, is a citizen of Bangladesh by descent so cannot be made stateless by losing her British citizenship.
Ms Begum’s lawyer, Daniel Furner, said his client would ‘immediately initiate an appeal’ against the decision ‘as a matter of exceptional urgency’.
Judge Doron Blum, announcing the decision of the tribunal, said that the move did not breach the Home Office’s ‘extraterritorial human rights policy by exposing Ms Begum to a real risk of death or inhuman or degrading treatment’.
Former ISIS bride loses bid to have her citizenship back He added that, while Ms Begum ‘cannot have an effective appeal in her current circumstances’, it ‘does not follow that her appeal succeeds’ on that ground.
Former home secretary Sajid Javid stripped her of her British citizenship later that month, a decision Ms Begum’s lawyers argue was unlawful as it rendered her stateless.
