The Court of Appeal has granted permission to appeal in Zulfiqar, in which the Upper Tribunal sought to grapple with the inconsistent definitions of “foreign criminal” contained in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 and the UK Borders Act 2007.
Shuyeb Muquit acts for Mr Zulfiqar, who was a British citizen when he was convicted of murder, but subsequently renounced that citizenship on qualified terms. When those terms went unfulfilled, the Secretary of State refused to reinstate his citizenship and instead served a deportation order.
The Upper Tribunal’s judgment in Zulfiqar (‘Foreign criminal’; British citizen) [2020] UKUT 312 (IAC) was reported as guidance on the reach of the statutory ‘foreign criminal’ deportation provisions, namely that it applies to potentially British citizen criminals. In this both factually and legally unprecedented case, the Court of Appeal will consider whether provisions intended for use against foreign citizens extend to persons such as Mr Zulfiqar, who were British when committing the offence by reference to which deportation was said to be justified, but who renounced their British citizenship in circumstances entirely unconnected to the criminal conduct.
