US says ISIL bride Muthana who wants to return home has been denied citizenship

A U.S citizen, Hoda Muthana, who left the city of Alabama some years back to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group in Syria has been denied citizenship.

She was born in the year 1994 in the town of Hackensack, New Jersey.

That much information was revealed by the United States, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who said on Wednesday that Muthana will not be allowed to return to the US.

Pompeo further noted in a statement that Muthana who wants to return to the US with her 18-month-old son has no “legal basis” to claim American citizenship.

“Ms Hoda Muthana is not a US citizen and will not be admitted into the United States,” Pompeo said. “She does not have any legal basis, no valid US passport, no right to a passport nor any visa to travel to the United States.”

However, a lawyer for the Muthana’s family, Hassan Shibly, said the administration’s position was based on a “complicated” interpretation of the law involving her father.

Read also: US House Chairman wants Mueller to probe Trump’s Deutsche Bank link

“They’re claiming her dad was a diplomat when she was born, which, in fact, he wasn’t,” Shibly told The Associated Press

Muthana says she regrets aligning herself with ISIL and wants to return to the United States with her child.

Her case is similar to another ISIL bride Shamima Begum, 19, who has revealed that she is making moves to seek Dutch citizenship after she was told the British Home Office had issued an order to revoke her citizenship days after she declared her intention to return home from Syria.

According to Begum, one of the three British schoolgirls who left the UK in 2015 to live in ISIL’s so-called “caliphate”, she will explore the option of seeking Dutch citizenship.

She also described the order of the Home Office to revoke her citizenship as ‘kind of heart-breaking.
“I don’t know what to say,” Begum, who ran away when she was 15 to live under ISIL, told ITV News on Wednesday.

“I am not that shocked but I am a bit shocked. It’s a bit upsetting and frustrating. I feel like it’s a bit unjust on me and my son,” Begum added.

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now