US President Donald Trump says a woman who left the US to become a propagandist for the Islamic State (IS) group will not be allowed to return.
On Twitter he said had instructed the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “not to allow Hoda Muthana back into the country”. Mr Pompeo had earlier stated that the 24-year-old was not a US citizen and would not be admitted to the US. However her family and her lawyer maintain that she has US citizenship.
AFP
Ms Muthana grew up in Alabama and travelled to Syria to join IS when she was 20. She had told her family that she was going to a university event in Turkey. The case is similar to UK-born teenager Shamima Begum who has been stripped from her British citizenship.
President Trump recently told the UK and other European countries to take back and put on trail IS fighters captured in the final battle against the group. He warned the alternative was that US-led Kurdish forces would have to release them.
Ms Muthana’s family lawyer, Hassan Shibly, said: “The Trump administration continues its attempts to wrongfully strip citizens of their citizenship,”
“Hoda Muthana had a valid US passport and is a citizen. She was born in Hackensack, NJ in October 1994, months after her father stopped being [a] diplomat.”
In later comments to AFP news agency he said his client wanted due process and was willing to go to prison if convicted.
Hassan Shibly said: “We cannot get to a point where we simply strip citizenship from those who break the law. That’s not what America is about,”
Mr Pompeo said Ms Muthana “does not have any legal basis, no valid US passport, no right to a passport, nor any visa to travel to the United States”.
“Hoda Muthana is not a US citizen and will not be admitted into the United States,”
Ms Muthana has said she has applied for and received a US passport before leaving for Turkey, after arriving in Syria she posted a picture on Twitter of herself and three other women burning Westen passports. Ms Muthana, who has an 18-month-old son, has said she deeply regrets joining IS and has apologised for social media posts in which she promoted the group and its aims.
In an interview with ABC News she said: “I wish I could take it completely off the net, completely out of people’s memory… I regret it… I hope America doesn’t think I’m a threat to them and I hope they can accept me and I’m just a normal human being who’s been manipulated once and hopefully never again.”
