UK: Theresa May to seek support for plan to deprive terror suspects of citizenship

In light of the Canadian government’s proposed revocation for dual nationals convicted of terrorism or comparable crimes, will be interesting to see whether UK Home Secretary will be able to overcome House of Lords opposition to revocation even in cases of statelessness.

To be followed as the UK has, among Western countries, the most draconian and discretionary approach to revocation (the Canadian government proposals have been questioned by some witnesses on both substantive and process grounds at committee hearings, but this less arbitrary with some due process in contrast to UK):

A former director of public prosecutions, a former supreme court judge and 23 Liberal Democrats were among the 242 peers who supported Lord Pannick’s successful Lords amendment that would delay its implementation. The move was added to the immigration bill in January without any of the pre-legislative scrutiny that the remainder was subject to.

At the time of the Lords defeat, Pannick said: “There are regrettably all too many dictators around the world willing to use the creation of statelessness as a weapon. We should do nothing to suggest that it is acceptable.”

Theresa May to seek support for plan to deprive terror suspects of citizenship | Politics | The Guardian.

Strong commentary against the UK approach by Donald Campbell of Reprieve, a NGO that “delivers justice and saves lives, from death row to Guantanamo Bay.”

In medieval England, those who had been forced to “abjure the realm” and go into exile would be required to walk barefoot, carrying a wooden cross, to the nearest port.  There, they were to take passage on the first available ship; until they were able to do so, they had to wade, daily, into the sea, as testimony to their willingness to leave the country.

This specific provision is absent from the Home Secretary’s proposed expansion of her powers to arbitrarily deprive Britons of their citizenship – expected to be considered again by MPs this week.  But the echo of the medieval punishment of banishment in the modern measure of ‘citizenship-stripping’ is impossible to ignore. It has perhaps been best summed up by the Supreme Court of the United States, which has described the practice of making someone stateless by removing their citizenship as “a form of punishment more primitive than torture.”

Theresa May’s citizenship-stripping proposal is worse than medieval banishment