What next for Shamima Begum after losing appeal against removal of citizenship?

ITV News Global Security Editor Rohit Kachroo reports on Shamima Begum’s legal fight over the decision to deprive her of her British citizenship

Words by Security Producer Dan Howells

Shamima Begum still has legal options open to her in her fight against the decision to revoke her UK citizenship, despite these routes narrowing on Wednesday morning.

The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) on Wednesday upheld the home secretary’s decision in February 2019 to revoke Ms Begum’s UK citizenship on national security grounds.

Ms Begum’s lawyers will be studying the judgment published to see if there are any points that they may be able to argue through the Court of Appeal.

It should be remembered though that elements of her case have already been heard at the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2021 that she could not be granted permission to return to the UK to participate in person in her legal fight.

SIAC has also already ruled that the home secretary’s original decision did not render Ms Begum “stateless” as she held an automatic right to Bangladeshi citizenship, though her lawyers continue to contend that practically speaking she is stateless as Bangladesh would not accept her.

ITV’s Global Security Editor, Rohit Kachroo, revisits the headlines surrounding Shamima Begum in a special podcast to ask ultimately, who is to blame?

In an interview with ITV News in May 2019, the minister for foreign affairs for Bangladesh said: “We have nothing to do with Shamima Begum. She is not a Bangladeshi citizen. She never applied for Bangladeshi citizenship. She was born in England and her mother is British".

He added that if she were ever to enter Bangladesh, “she will be put in prison and immediately, the rule is, she should be hanged”.

Shamima Begum’s lawyers argued during the five-day hearing at SIAC in November that she had effectively been trafficked to Syria as a child, when she travelled to Islamic State territory in 2015.

But the Home Office response was that despite her age and how she may have gotten there, it did not change their assessment of the threat she might pose to national security should she return to the UK.

A witness who gave evidence during the November hearings, a senior MI5 officer, said: “We assess whether someone is a threat and it is important to note that victims very much can be threats, if someone is indeed a victim of trafficking.”