Deprivation of British citizenship and withdrawal of passports 2.2 Who is deprived of their citizenship? Most fraud cases in recent years have involved people originally from Albania. 40 A typical scenario is where the person pretended to be from Kosovo rather than Albania when claiming asylum in the late 1990s. They went on to naturalise as British citizens but were deprived of that citizenship many years later, when the deception came to light. 41 There is no recent official information about the characteristics of people deprived on citizenship for ‘public good’ reasons. 42 But there are (statistically speaking) relatively few such cases, and the background and/or identity of the person concerned is sometimes in the public domain. This has allowed some commentators to collate the known cases and draw conclusions. • In 2011, the barrister Amanda Weston identified nine people by nationality and said “the common denominator is that by far the majority if not all are Muslims”. 43 • In 2014, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reviewed 53 deprivation cases, from which it identified 18 individuals. Of those 18, “at least five” had been born in the UK. 44 • In 2022, the Institute of Race Relations commented “the vast majority of those deprived are Muslim men with south Asian or middle Eastern/ north African heritage”. 45 There have been several high-profile cases of public good citizenship deprivation over the years. These include: • 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 13 Abu Hamza, an Egyptian-born imam who was served with a deprivation decision in April 2003. He ultimately succeeded on appeal, so remains a British citizen, but was convicted of serious criminal offences in both the UK and USA. 46 Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, An inspection of the use of deprivation of citizenship by the Status Review Unit, 29 February 2024, figure 7 For example, Hysaj (Deprivation of Citizenship: Delay) Albania [2020] UKUT 128 (IAC), 19 March 2020; Berdica v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Deprivation of citizenship: consideration) [2022] UKUT 276 (IAC), 5 April 2022; Muslija (deprivation: reasonably foreseeable consequences) [2022] UKUT 337 (IAC), 16 November 2022 PQ 81999 [on British Nationality], answered on 28 August 2020. The Home Office had previously been willing to divulge the nationality of people deprived of British citizenship: PQ 187945 [on British Nationality], answered on 4 March 2014. Institute of Race Relations, Deprivation of citizenship – by stealth, 9 June 2011 “What do we know about citizenship stripping?”, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 10 December 2014 Institute of Race Relations, Citizenship: from right to privilege, 11 September 2022, p8 R v Hamza [2006] EWCA Crim 2118, 28 July 2006; Hamza v Secretary of State for the Home Department SC/23/2010, 5 November 2010; “Radical cleric Abu Hamza jailed for life by US court”, BBC News, 9 January 2015 Commons Library Research Briefing, 18 December 2024