Clarke loses appeal over Guantanamo inmate

The home secretary, Charles Clarke, today lost a court battle to strip a terror suspect held at Guantanamo Bay of his right to British citizenship. A solicitor acting for David Hicks, 31, a Muslim convert from Australia who was captured in Afghanistan, said British diplomats would now have to start negotiations with the US authorities over his release from the controversial prison camp in Cuba.

Stephen Grosz said he would be making immediate representations to British officials to take up his client’s case.

Britain has managed to get all nine of its nationals held in the US base released.
Three court of appeal judges dismissed a challenge by Mr Clarke to a high court ruling last December that he had “no power in law” to deprive Mr Hicks of citizenship.

Mr Clarke had argued that Mr Hicks was entitled to British citizenship - his mother was born in south London and emigrated to Australia with her family - but that registration could be refused or withdrawn because of his alleged involvement with al-Qaida.

He is alleged to have undergone intensive terrorist training in Pakistan and Afghanistan, including at an al-Qaida camp with known Islamist extremists.

The Home Office is considering taking the case to the House of Lords for a final appeal.

Lord Justice Pill, giving the first of the rulings of three appeal judges, said the home secretary’s action was unlawful because Mr Hicks had not been given a chance to make representations about his attitudes since he discovered he had the right to citizenship.

“Where a person has the right to citizenship and takes, or is prepared to take, the appropriate oath and give the appropriate pledge, basic fairness requires an assessment of his state of mind when he has become a citizen before he can be deprived of the citizenship granted.”

Lord Justice Rix, giving his reasons for dismissing the appeal, said the home secretary had sought to use Mr Hicks’s conduct before he was detained to show that he was “disaffected” towards the Queen and therefore not entitled to citizenship under the British Nationality Act.

The appeal judge said that Mr Hicks “could not have been disaffected towards Her Majesty at a time when he was neither a British citizen nor owed in any other way any allegiance to Her Majesty other than in her right as Queen of Australia”.

A Home Office spokesman said: “Today’s ruling by the court of appeal is very disappointing.

“The Home Office is giving careful consideration to the judgment and will consider the question of further appeal.”

Amnesty International’s campaigns director, Tim Hancock, said: “Rather than fighting David Hicks’s claim for British citizenship, the UK authorities should concentrate on the fact that Mr Hicks and hundreds of others are being held without charge or trial at Guantánamo Bay.

“The UK government should be pressing for Mr Hicks to be released if he is not granted a proper trial on the US mainland.

“Similarly, the UK authorities ought to be making urgent representations on behalf of eight long-term residents of Britain who are also held at Guantánamo.”

He added: “After four years the Guantánamo Bay prison camp has become a byword for abuse and an indictment of the US government’s failure to uphold human rights in the ‘war on terror’.”

Press Association