- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Keerthi Mohan
A FATHER has lost his fight to keep his British-born son’s UK citizenship after it was stripped off by former home secretary Amber Rudd.
Abdullah Islam had wanted his son, 22-year-old Ashraf Mahmud Islam, to be brought back to the UK to face justice and to be protected from facing the death penalty.
Ashraf travelled to Syria aged 18 in 2015 while studying A-level law at a British educational institute in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to join Daesh (Islamic State).
In 2017, Rudd stripped him off his British citizenship saying depriving him of his nationality wouldn’t make him stateless as he also has Bangladeshi citizenship.
Ashraf is currently held in a Kurdish-run military prison in Syria.
However, a court on Wednesday (7) rejected Abdulla’s attempts to keep his son’s citizenship.
Justice Pepperall said: “Ashraf is in detention in Syria and at risk of trial in the Middle East and the possible imposition of the death penalty entirely because of his own actions in travelling to Syria and engaging in jihad.
“The only action taken by the home secretary in this case has been to deprive Ashraf of his citizenship.
“He is not in peril in Syria because of that decision, but because he is being held on suspicion of involvement in the IS insurgency.”
Refusing permission for a full judicial review hearing, Justice Pepperall said there were no grounds for challenging Rudd’s decision.
He said: “It is not clear how the home secretary is under any legal duty to make arrangements to repatriate Ashraf in order that he can be tried in the UK.
“Ashraf got himself to Syria and might well have committed serious criminal offences in the Middle East.
“However repugnant his possible fate might be to British values, any British citizen who commits serious crimes abroad is subject to local justice and cannot simply demand that the British government extricates him from a situation of his own making in order that he can face the more palatable prospect of justice in a British court.
“The British government routinely urges foreign states to respect the human rights of its citizens who are suspected or convicted of crimes overseas and, in particular, argues against the imposition of the death penalty anywhere in the world.
“The United Kingdom cannot, however, properly insist that foreign states allow our own courts to try British citizens for offences committed abroad.”
