Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) went from a jihadist motion as soon as aligned to al Qaeda to forming the official authorities of Syria.
It was a monumental transformation for them, their nation and the broader Center East.
However probably too for British individuals who went to Syria – and who had been stripped of their citizenship because of this, on the grounds of nationwide safety.
Tauqir Sharif, higher often called Tox, went to Syria in 2012 as an support employee. He was accused of being a part of a gaggle affiliated with al Qaeda, which he denies, and the then-home secretary Amber Rudd disadvantaged him of his British citizenship in 2017.
“As of now, I am deprived of my UK citizenship but I’m not a convicted terrorist – and the reason for that is because we refused, we boycotted, the SIAC [Special Immigration Appeals Commission] secret courts, which don’t allow you to see any of the evidence presented against you,” he mentioned.
“And one of the things that I always called for was, look, put me in front of a jury, let’s have an open hearing.”
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Tox went to Syria in 2012
HTS continues to be a proscribed terrorist organisation however the British authorities has now established relations with it.
International Secretary David Lammy travelled to Damascus to fulfill the jihadist-turned-Syrian interim president – the person who swapped his nom de guerre of al Jolani for Ahmed al Sharaa.
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David Lammy shakes fingers with Ahmed al Sharaa in Damascus. Pic: X / @DavidLammy
If the UK authorities takes HTS off the fear listing, what does that imply for individuals who misplaced their citizenship after being accused of being a part of it?
Individuals who joined HTS are solely a subset among the many scores of people that have had their citizenship revoked – a software the UK authorities has been fast to make use of.
In response to a report by the Parliamentary Joint Human Rights Committee, the UK “uses deprivation of citizenship orders more than almost any country in the world”.
The height of that was in 2017, and primarily in relation to Syria – particularly within the case of individuals becoming a member of Islamic State, maybe most famously Shamima Begum.
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Shamima Begum was stripped of her British citizenship on nationwide safety grounds
And since individuals can’t be made totally stateless, and have to have a second nationality, or be probably eligible for one, there are worries of racism in who the orders apply to.
International locations like Pakistan and Bangladesh provide twin nationality, whereas different nations don’t. In 2022, the Institute of Race Relations mentioned “the vast majority of those deprived are Muslim men with South Asian or Middle Eastern/North African heritage”.
Authorized gray areas
“I do think there is a problem when you have people whose relationship with the country that they’re left with is really technical and they may never have realised that they had that citizenship before and may never gone to that country,” he mentioned.
“Me and my predecessors have all said, owing to how frequently this power is used, it should be something that the independent reviewer should have the power to review. I asked, my predecessor asked, we’ve both been told no, so I agree there’s a lack of transparency.”
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No automated reversal
Even when the federal government does take away HTS from the fear listing, it might not routinely invalidate choices to deprive individuals of their citizenship.
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Macer Gifford fought with the Kurdish Folks’s Safety Items (YPG) as a international volunteer. Pic: AP
Macer Gifford gave up a profession as a banker in London to hitch the Kurdish Folks’s Safety Items (YPG) as a international volunteer between 2015 and 2017.
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“We can’t sort of go through previous cases nitpicking through it, wasting time and money to bring it up to date,” he added.
“We can’t be naive because the intent to go out, the decision to go in itself is a huge decision for them. So it shows commitment when they’re there, they then, if they take an active participation in the organisations that they’ve been accused of joining, again, that involves training and perseverance and dedication to the cause.”
However these born and raised in Britain, who joined the identical trigger, and misplaced their citizenship because of this, would possibly fairly ask why that ought to stay the case.
