How and why did Shamima Begum lose her UK citizenship?

Shamima Begum, the British-born national who travelled to Syria as a schoolgirl to join ISIL (ISIS), has lost her latest appeal against the removal of her citizenship.

Her lawyers on Wednesday vowed to keep fighting, saying the case was “nowhere near over”.

The British government stripped Begum of her citizenship in 2019, shortly after she was found in a detention camp in Syria.

Public opinion is divided over her case. Some say she should remain barred, while others believe she should stand trial in a British court for joining ISIL.

Here’s what you should know about the case:

Who is Shamima Begum?

Begum was born in 1999 in east London to parents of Bangladeshi heritage.

She is one of three schoolgirls who travelled in 2015 to ISIL-controlled Syria. She was 15 at the time.

In Syria, she married an ISIL fighter and had two children, both of whom died as infants.

Her British citizenship was revoked on national security grounds shortly after she was found nine months pregnant in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019.

In an interview with The Times newspaper in 2019, Begum said she was tired of life on the battlefield and feared for her unborn child. That baby, named Jarrah, ultimately died from pneumonia later that year.

Why and how did Begum lose her UK citizenship?

Citizenship is a legal status that “means a person has a right to live in a state and that state cannot refuse them entry or deport them”, according to the Migration Observatory of the University of Oxford.

This status may be conferred at birth or, in some states, obtained “through naturalisation”.

In 2019, a British judge said, however, that British citizenship is “not an absolute entitlement for everyone. It can be removed by the Secretary of State, but not if to do so would render the subject stateless”.

In Begum’s case, a UK tribunal ruled in 2019 that removing her citizenship was lawful because Begum “holds Bangladeshi citizenship” by descent through her parents.

Bangladesh denied this and said she would not be allowed in the country.