Britain Passes Legislation to Strip Citizenship

On May 15th, The New York Times posted an article about Britain passing legislation that removes the restrictions on revoking citizenship for suspected or convicted terrorists. After four months, the House of Lords has finally decided to nullify the clause that kept the government from stripping citizenship that rendered the accused as stateless. This law seems to be inspired by the events following the Hilal al-Jedda, who was stripped of his British citizenship in 2007, after he was suspected of smuggling explosives.

I have a lot of questions about why a country benefits from stripping someone's citizenship. With Hilal al-Jedda's case he was detained in Iraq and then lost his citizenship, which leads me to believe that Great Britain is essentially saying "We have no association with him." If someone is suspected of terrorism on British soil, does the national security benefit from stripping their citizenship?

On the other hand, if a country strips a person of their citizenship, does that mean they do not have to abide by the rights that a person would have otherwise like due process or a speedy trial? Can they be detained indefinitely? And if the person has dual citizenship is it the responsibility of the other country to intervene in violations of rights? What if the person is now stateless?

Posted by Evy Lopez

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