The UK Government has stripped citizenship from two British aid workers and a volunteer in northern Syria.
A letter from Home Secretary Amber Rudd, sent to families of the accused, said the two workers “present a risk to the national security of the United Kingdom”. The volunteer, who has delivered aid into Syria and worked on charity-funded projects, has been “assessed to have been involved in terrorism-related activity” and “Islamist extremist activities”.
The three have established records in provision of assistance and running of facilities for displaced Syrians, working with with numerous recognised charities and humanitarian organisations. They say they have never fought in Syria and none has been charged with any offence in the UK. While their work covers Idlib Province, where the extremist bloc Hayat Tahrir al-Sham controls much of the territory, they say they have no links with militant groups.
One of the three said the letter to his family claimed he was “aligned with an al-Qaeda-aligned group”.
He responded: “I am an aid worker. Everything I do is transparent. They believe I am affiliated with Al Qa’eda which is ridiculous. We risk our lives every day to help people and they call us terrorists.”
Jahangir Mohammed, a consultant working with UK charities sending aid to Syria, explained:
Obviously there are 200 charities operating in that part of Syria and they come into contact with the fighters. The reality is that there are separate civilian authorities and networks that work with the charities. The fighters would not jeopardise the population turning against them by interfering with aid.
Pro-Assad propagandists have run a sustained campaign of disinformation against aid workers and the White Helmets civil defense organization, trying to hinder and stigmatize assistance and recovery efforts in opposition areas of Syria.
Home Office Claims “Range of Checks”
A spokesperson for the UK Home Office said a “range of checks” were carried out, such as “consideration of an individual’s personal circumstances and research in to the nationality laws of the country concerned”:
The law requires that this action only proceeds if the individual concerned would not be left stateless. This extends to people who may have been born in the UK, but who hold another nationality, for example, through one of their parents.
The aid workers, who were born in the UK, say they do not consider themselves citizens of any other country, even though they are entitled to citizenship elsewhere through their parents.
All three accused are appealing to have their British citizenship restored, but the process is hindered because the government is refusing to reveal the information on which it based its decisions.
Rudd wrote to families of “reliance on information, which in my opinion, should not be made public in the interest of national security and because disclosure would be contrary to the public good”.
