Australian court curtails govt's citizenship powers

Canberra: Australia's highest court on Wednesday found a Cabinet minister illegally cancelled a suspected Islamic State group fighter's citizenship in a landmark ruling that curtails how governments can deal with extremists.

The High Court, in a 6-to-1 judgment, restored Delil Alexander's Australian citizenship that was removed in July last year by the then-Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews.

The 35-year-old Alexander, who was born in Australia and has Turkish citizenship by descent, is in a Syrian prison on terrorism convictions. He left Australia for Turkey in 2013 and crossed the Syrian border before he was arrested by a Kurdish militia in 2017. Andrews cancelled Alexander's citizenship based on an Australian intelligence report that he had joined the group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and had likely engaged in fighting and recruiting for the extremist group.

But the court ruled that the power she used section 36B of the Australian Citizenship Act was unconstitutional because it gave the minister the power of a court to determine criminal guilt. A minister would still be able to revoke an Australian's citizenship under a separate section in cases where an individual had been sentenced to at least three years in prison for a crime that demonstrates the person has repudiated their allegiance to Australia .

Rayner Thwaites, a Sydney University constitutional law academic, said the ruling meant a government could no longer cancel Australian citizenship without involving a court.

"The orders in the case are that section 36B is invalid, so that would have reasonably direct ramifications for others, Thwaites said.