The UK Supreme Court on Wednesday refused Shamima Begum’s application for permission to appeal the 2019 decision to revoke her British citizenship, ruling that the grounds of appeal “do not raise an arguable point of law”. The decision comes after Begum lost her Court of Appeal challenge in February this year, in a protracted legal challenge against both the Secretary of State’s decision to revoke her citizenship in 2019, and the Special Immigration Appeals Commission’s (SIAC) dismissal of her application for leave to enter the UK from Syria.

British-born Begum left the UK for Syria in 2015 to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In 2019, she was deprived of her British citizenship under section 40(2) of the British Nationality Act 1981. She filed an application for leave to enter the UK under the Immigration Rules, which was dismissed. Begum challenged this dismissal before the SIAC, where the UK Secretary of State’s decision was affirmed. She made an application for judicial review of the decision on both her citizenship and application for leave to enter, however, this was dismissed by an administrative court. The Court of Appeal then allowed an appeal against SIAC, which was deemed incorrect by the Supreme Court in 2021.

Begum then lost her February appeal this year, when the Court of Appeal unanimously ruled that she must remain in Syria. In March 2024, the Court of Appeal refused to refer her matter to the Supreme Court.

The application for permission to appeal the March 2024 decision was dismissed on four grounds. First, Begum argued that “when taking the deprivation decision in 2019, the Secretary of State was required by Article 4 of the [European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)] to consider whether [Begum] (then in Syria) was a potential victim of trafficking”. The court rejected this argument on the basis that it went “beyond the existing case law of the European Court of Human Rights”.

Second, Begum argued that she had a right to make representations to the Secretary of State before the deprivation decision and that the decision was unlawful on this basis. The court affirmed the Court of Appeal’s view that “a right to make representations before a deprivation decision would be liable to undermine the effectiveness of such a decision in cases concerned with national security”.

Third, Begum argued that the Secretary of State “failed to have regard to the need to foster good community relations, as required by section 149 of the Equality Act 2010“. The court ruled that the question of community relations had been considered, and found that regardless, this was excluded by section 192, which sets out that a person cannot contravene the act when safeguarding national security.

Fourth, Begum argued that the deprivation decision left her “de facto stateless”, and that therefore, the Secretary of State “failed to have regard to all material considerations.” The court ruled that this does not raise an arguable point of law.

The court ordered that Begum’s application be refused and that she pay the Secretary of State’s legal costs. A spokesperson for Begum’s legal team says that it plans to petition the case to the European Court of Human Rights. The spokesperson said, “We, her lawyers, will take every possible legal step including to petition to the European Court of Human Rights.”