London:

A verdict is expected on Friday in the appeal of a woman who lost her British citizenship after marrying an Islamic State group militant as a teenager.

Shamima Begum, 24, filed a lawsuit against the revocation of her citizenship at London’s Court of Appeal last October.

Her lawyer told the court the Home Office failed to consider Begum’s legal responsibilities as a potential victim of human trafficking.

Begum, whose family is of Bangladeshi origin, left her home in east London for Syria in 2015 when she was 15 with two school friends.

There she married an Islamic State fighter and had three children, none of whom survived.

In February 2019, Begum said she was left stateless after then-UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid revoked her British citizenship on national security grounds after she was discovered in a Syrian refugee camp.

A British court ruled in 2020 that she was not stateless because she was a “citizen of Bangladeshi origin” as she was born to a Bangladeshi mother at the time of the decision.

Last year, Begum lost his appeal against the decision before the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC).

SIAC said that while there were “credible suspicions that Begum was recruited, moved and harbored for the purpose of sexual exploitation”, this did not prevent Javid from revoking her citizenship.

The ruling means Begum cannot return to the UK from her current home, a refugee camp in northern Syria.

Lawyers for the Home Office argued that SIAC’s conclusion was correct.

Begum is one of hundreds of Europeans whose fate has challenged the government since the fall of Islamist extremists’ self-proclaimed caliphate in 2019.

Begum’s lawyer told the SIAC hearing that her client and her friends had been “influenced” by the “determined and effective” IS group’s “propaganda machine.”

It is estimated that around 900 people from the UK have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join IS. About 150 of them are believed to have been stripped of their citizenship, according to government data.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)