28 Jun Unlawful Citizenship Delays for Bahrain Human Rights Activist Remedied
The Home Office has granted citizenship to DPG client Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, a prominent Bahrain Pro-Democracy and Human Rights Activist, after he challenged the lawfulness of over 3 years of delays in deciding his application.
Pre-action letters challenging the lawfulness of these lengthy delays were sent by DPG after a complaint to the Home Office Independent Examiner of Complaints failed to resolve the issue. Internal Home Office and Foreign Office correspondence, obtained under a data protection subject access request, showed that the Home Office had assessed that Mr Alwadaei met the relevant statutory test since at least January 2023, yet a decision continued to be delayed. It appears this was a result of Foreign Office “bilateral concerns” regarding the effect that a grant of citizenship would have on UK relations with the Bahrain government. Our client challenged this as an unlawful and irrelevant consideration. In response, the Home Office has brought the delays to an end and granted citizenship to Mr Alwadaei, bringing to an end a period of serious uncertainty and his statelessness in international law. The Bahrain government deprived him of citizenship in 2015 in response to his work campaigning for democracy and human rights in Bahrain, in a move that was widely criticised.
The decision has been covered here:
Ben Keith acted in the case, instructed by Daniel Carey and Catherine Dowle of DPG.
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