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Navy Vet Sues US Gov to Allow Daesh Bride to Return from Syria

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A woman wearing a hijab - Sputnik International
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A former US Navy commander filed a complaint on behalf of the father of the teen Daesh bride Hoda Muthana to recognize her as a US citizen and to allow her and her 18-month-old son return to the country.

Charles Swift, a former Navy commander and director of the Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America, filed the complaint in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking to oblige the Trump administration to recognize Muthana as a US citizen, the Daily Caller reported.

“Citizenship is a fundamental constitutional right, the most valuable right you will have. If it can be taken away, then it must be done with due process of law. Where citizenship is concerned, that’s a judicial hearing. There has to be a process. You can’t simply say it. You would have to prove it,” Swift said, cited by the Washington Post.

Muthana was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, to father Ahmed Ali Muthana, who is a former Yemeni diplomat. She attended the University of Alabama at Birmingham but ran away to become a member of Daesh in 2014. According to the Guardian, she became one of Daesh’s most prominent online agitators. However, speaking from al-Hawl refugee camp in northern Syria, Muthana said she was brainwashed at that time and misunderstood her faith and now deeply regrets it.

READ MORE: Daesh Teen Bride Says She Is ‘Willing to Change’ to Stay in UK

“I look back now and I think I was very arrogant. Now I’m worried about my son’s future. In the end, I didn’t have many friends left, because the more I talked about the oppression of Isis the more I lost friends. I was brainwashed once and my friends are still brainwashed,” she told the Guardian.

In this file photo taken on February 22, 2015 Renu Begum, eldest sister of missing British girl Shamima Begum, holds a picture of her sister while being interviewed by the media in central London - Sputnik International
Bangladesh Denies Citizenship to Daesh Teen Bride Shamima Begum - Reports
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday that Muthana is not a citizen because she was born to a diplomat and thus cannot return to the US. He was supported by US President Donald Trump, who agreed “not to allow Hoda Muthana back into the Country.”

Whether Muthana is a citizen of the US could hinge on when her father was discharged from his position as a diplomat, according to the Washington Post. Her lawyers claim they can prove her father was no longer a diplomat when she was born on October 28, 1994. However, the government insisted that his termination was not officially documented until February 1995, thus revoking Muthana’s passport in 2016 during the Obama administration as she deemed not to be a birthright citizen of the US.

*Daesh (ISIL/ISIS/Islamic State), a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries.

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