One Pump Court pupil Joseph Maggs explores a recent citizenship deprivation appeal in the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. One Pump Court’s Alex Burrett appeared on behalf of the Appellant, instructed by Sunita Joshi of JD Spicer Zeb Solicitors, and led by Hugh Southey KC of Matrix Chambers.

This blog was originally published on Free Movement. Joseph is currently completing his first six and will be available to take instructions from April 2026.

The Special Immigration Appeals Commission has dismissed an appeal against a decision to deprive a refugee father of two of his British citizenship for national security reasons. The case is D10 v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] UKSIAC SC/181/2021.

Background

D10, a non-European national, arrived in the UK in 2002 and was granted asylum. His wife joined him in 2005. They naturalised and have two British children. The eldest is an adult but thinks and behaves like an eight-year-old and attended a school for children with special educational needs or disabilities in the UK.

In May 2019, D10 was arrested under a European Arrest Warrant and in November 2020 extradited to Greece on drug trafficking charges. In January 2021, the Home Office concluded that he is an agent of his home country’s intelligence service and deprived him of citizenship under section 40(2) of the British Nationality Act 1981, on the grounds that it was conducive to the public good to do so.

D10 was acquitted by a Greek court in April 2022 and subsequently removed by the Greek authorities to his home country, where he says he keeps a low profile. His family joined him there in summer 2023.

The appeal

SIAC treated D10’s eight grounds of appeal as four main grounds:

1.    The Home Secretary’s decision was unreasonable;

2.    It breached D10 and his family’s Article 8 rights;

3.    It placed him at real risk of being subjected to treatment contrary to Articles 2 and 3 on return to his home country; and

4.    It was not kept under review during the appeal.

All grounds were dismissed.

SIAC began by considering two cross-cutting issues: the impact of the decision on D10’s family, and the relevance to the decision of his acquittal in Greece.

The impact of deprivation on the family was limited:

The decision to deprive D10 of his citizenship does not prevent the family from living together: they continue to live together in the country. Nor does it prevent D10’s wife and children from living in the United Kingdom – they may continue to do so if they wish. Nor does it, in itself, necessarily prevent D10 from living with his wife and children in the United Kingdom. (¶39)

SIAC relied on Aziz v SSHD [2018] EWCA Civ 1884, which established that where an individual is in-country at the time of deprivation, the Home Office is not required to conduct a “proleptic” analysis of whether it would lead to deportation. Applied by analogy to out-of-country deprivation cases, this meant:

it is necessary to consider only the direct impact of the deprivation decision on family life, as opposed to seeking to forecast the outcome of an application for entry clearance. (¶40)

It was immaterial that D10 was being held outside the UK against his will, that the Home Office appears to have waited until he was outside the UK before making the decision or that, as SIAC says later in the judgment, the main goal of the decision was “to keep D10 outside the United Kingdom” (¶51).

As for the acquittal, it was understandable that D10 thought the decision was “influenced…by the suggestion that he had been involved in importing a huge quantity of class A drugs” (¶42). However, “having considered the totality of the OPEN and CLOSED evidence”, the acquittal was “of no, or at best marginal, relevance to the decision”. The decision was based entirely on the assessment that D10 was an intelligence agent.

Whether the deprivation was reasonable in the circumstances

There was therefore no basis for arguing that the decision was unreasonable for failing to have regard to the acquittal or the family. That left the question of whether the underlying basis for deprivation was reasonable.

Much of the open evidence concerned the nature of D10’s relationship with a relative whose links to intelligence he was aware of. He denied it was anything more than friendly and familial. This was disputed by the other live witness, an MI5 agent, who was unable to explain why in open evidence.

SIAC accepted that

we are in no position to find, on the OPEN evidence alone, that there was a basis to assess that D10 was himself an agent of the country’s intelligence service. Mere association with someone who D10 believed to have connections with the country’s intelligence service is not (nearly) sufficient. (¶47)

But as so often in deprivation appeals, the national security evidence heard behind closed doors was decisive. SIAC found that it not only established that the Home Secretary’s conclusion about D10 being an agent was justifiable – it was also “highly likely to be correct” (¶27, ¶49). The decision was therefore one which was reasonably open to her.

Human rights arguments

The Article 8 ground was dismissed “by reference, principally, to the decision in Aziz” (¶53). In any event, SIAC indicated that were it to conduct a proportionality exercise,

we would unhesitatingly conclude that any impact on the family life of D10 and his family was justified as being necessary for, and proportionate to the legitimate aim of protecting the national security of the United Kingdom. (¶51)

On Articles 2 and 3, SIAC held that because D10 was out-of-country at the time of deprivation, he fell outside the primarily territorial jurisdiction of the ECHR, and deprivation is “the antithesis of the exercise of control” necessary to found extraterritorial jurisdiction (¶62, quoting S1, T1, U1 and V1 v SSHD [2016] EWCA Civ 560). It was not accepted that there is an exception to the rule where an appellant is involuntarily outside the UK or on the territory of another Council of Europe member.

SIAC nevertheless considered risk on return in relation to the Home Secretary’s own policy applying the safeguards in Articles 2 and 3. It concluded that the factors that gave rise to D10’s asylum claim no longer applied. Closed evidence was again relied upon, with the probable fact that he is an agent being a “strong protective factor against mistreatment” (¶65).

Reference was also made to country conditions guidance and the fact that D10 had now lived in his home country for some time without encountering difficulty, save for two incidents which SIAC found either did not amount to inhuman or degrading treatment or were implausible.

The review obligation

SIAC did not accept that the Home Office failed to keep the decision under review in light of new evidence about the acquittal and D10’s family. Unsurprisingly, permission to introduce an additional ground of failing to provide reasons which engaged with the acquittal or family life was refused.

A separate ground concerning delay and EU procedural safeguards was also dismissed. The timing of the decision, which occurred suspiciously soon after D10 was extradited, could only be addressed by reference to closed evidence, and the Special Advocates did not advance any argument as to delay.

Commentary

This is yet another example of the inherently mysterious – and for appellants, unfair – nature of deprivation appeals. The national security case, the contents of which will never be disclosed to D10, formed the basis for much of SIAC’s open reasoning.

Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Begum v SIAC [2021] UKSC 7, deprivation appeals have been limited to public law grounds save for human rights arguments, which are considered on their merits. This case shows how heavily restricted such arguments can be in light of Aziz and jurisdictional obstacles.

It appears all too easy for the Home Office to circumvent human rights considerations, including the best interests of children (a phrase which appears only once in the judgment despite the obligation in section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009).

This may not be the end of the road for the family. Even if further appeals in this case are unsuccessful, similar issues could be raised in an entry clearance challenge. Although, in reality, it is difficult to see how that could succeed without the justification for deprivation falling away.