Duncan Lewis Solicitors have successfully appealed the decisions of the Home Office to deprive two men of their British citizenship. As the appeals involved matters of national security, they were heard by the secretive court, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC). The Commission, chaired by Mr Justice Jay, allowed the appeals of the two men, anonymised as E3 and N3, on the basis that the deprivation orders had rendered them stateless.
The full judgment in E3 and N3 v SSHD SC/138/2017 and SC/146/2017 can be read at http://siac.decisions.tribunals.gov.uk/Documents/outcomes/documents/DOC000.pdf
Both E3 and N3 are British by birth and have Bangladeshi heritage. In June 2017, E3 was deprived of his citizenship after visiting Bangladesh to be present at the birth of his daughter. In October 2017, N3 was deprived of his citizenship after leaving the UK to go to Turkey for business for a few weeks. Both men were deprived of their citizenship on national security grounds days before they were due to return to the UK. They suddenly found themselves stranded in foreign countries without any source of income or support.
The Commission heard expert evidence from both sides and ultimately found that Bangladeshi citizenship law required both men to have formally applied to retain their Bangladeshi citizenship upon reaching the age of 21, and by failing to do so, they had allowed their citizenship to lapse. Since they did not possess Bangladeshi citizenship on the date of the British citizenship deprivation orders, the effect was to render them stateless. As such, the decisions were unlawful and both appeals were allowed.
The implications of the judgment are significant: