Meijers Committee standing committee of experts on international immigration, refugee and criminal law terrorist violence are also single nationals. For example, it is estimated that 17% of Dutch nationals who joined the jihad in Syria and Iraq were Dutch citizens without a migration background who converted to Islam.122 As these ethnic Dutch usually have only one nationality, they cannot be deprived of their Dutch citizenship even if they have committed the same terrorist acts as dual nationals. In other countries, notably Belgium, France and Italy, nationals by birth cannot be deprived of their citizenship even if they have nationality of another state (paragraph 3 above), which means that only naturalised dual nationals face the sanction of citizenship deprivation; - second, withdrawal of nationality will not always have the effect of removing the threat to national security. In France, for example, deprivation of citizenship does not automatically result in expulsion. Thus, the applicants in the case of Ghoumid and others were still living in France more than five years after their French nationality was withdrawn.123 Another example is that of a Moroccan-Dutch woman whose Dutch nationality was withdrawn when she presented herself, together with another Dutch woman and their young children, at the Dutch embassy in Ankara after having escaped from the Al-Hol prison camp in Northern Syria. Notwithstanding protest by the Dutch government, the Turkish authorities put the two women and their children on a flight to Amsterdam as they had no right to stay in Turkey, the Dutch criminal authorities made worldwide requests for their arrest with a view to extradition long ago and one of the women and all three minor children had Dutch nationality.124 The effectiveness of citizenship deprivation measures in combating terrorism has also been questioned by the Dutch intelligence agency (AIVD), which initially took little action to enable the application of these measures. In the agency’s view, withdrawal of the Dutch nationality would not take away the potential threat posed by the persons concerned. For two years after the entry into force of the relevant legislation, the AIVD prepared only three reports with a view to withdrawing the nationality of persons they kept track of. It was only after an explicit request by the Dutch Parliament that the service actively checked the files of all Dutch nationals who travelled to Syria to join the jihad and considered withdrawal of their nationality on national security grounds.125 The effectiveness of citizenship deprivation in combating terrorism has also been questioned by the Dutch prosecutors’ office which opposed the intended deprivation of nationality in most cases because it would make investigation and prosecution of the terrorist crimes committed by the Dutch nationals concerned more difficult;126 122 J. Groen, Jihadgangers zijn relatief vaak bekeerlingen, de Volkskrant 5 July 2017. This article cites information from a database with characteristics of 207 of the officially estimated 280 Dutch nationals who joined the jihad in Syria and Iraq. Qualitative empirical research amongst families of Dutch and Belgian jihadists confirms that a considerable share of those jihadists are ‘converts’, see M. van San, ‘Belgian and Dutch Young Men and Women Who Joined ISIS: Ethnographic Research among the Families They Left Behind’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2018) 41:1, p. 39-58, at p. 42. 123 Ghoumid and others/France, para 42. 124 Decision of Secretary of State for Justice of 30 October 2019, Staatscourant 2019, no. 60309 and TK 29754, nos. 531 and 534 125 CTIVD, Toezichtsrapport no. 68, Over het handelen van de AIVD in het kader van intrekking van het Nederlanderschap in het belang van de nationale veiligheid, 29 April 2020, p. 10-14. 126 Bex-Reimers et al 2020, p. 7 and 47. 25