What do experts think of revoking Shamima Begum's citizenship?

[Begum’s] criminality is very relevant … We have a wide array of legislative power in this country, many specifically designed to deal with returning fighters and sympathisers. The problem seems to be that [Javid] believed there was insufficient evidence to bring a prosecution.

The alternative was to deprive her of citizenship, meaning that the only way she can appeal against this decision is via the special immigration appeals commission, which is largely based on closed evidence, and which she will not have any access to (and neither will her lawyers). It seems that it is an easy way out for the home secretary without having to prove her criminality in a court of law.

One problem with the entire policy ... is that it is inherently discriminatory and racist in how it is applied. If you have two British citizens, one white English and born to white English parents, and one like Shamima Begum, who was born in the UK and has no links to Bangladesh apart from her parental heritage, the white English person cannot be deprived of their citizenship – on the basis that they do not have another nationality to fall back on.

In the legacy of this policy, it is unlikely that any cases have involved a white English person. It can only be used against children of immigrant parents. There is one case – Jack Letts, who has been accused of being involved with Isis in Syria and has dual Canadian-British citizenship. He has not been deprived of his statehood yet.

At the moment Begum is living in a refugee camp in a war zone in Syria with no consular access to the Bangladeshi authorities and no ability at all to evidence her nationality or benefit from it. For all intents and purposes she is stateless at the moment.

You can in law deprive a dual-national of British citizenship if the home secretary believes this is conducive to the public good. [Javid] will have to [prove both those things].

Assuming Begum had Bangladeshi citizenship – it’s not something she’s sought, it’s not something she seems ever to have used, she’s never been there. She’s got no real connection with the country to which the home secretary now claims she exclusively belongs. That is what makes it difficult.

The other thing that makes it difficult is that [this power is] normally used on people who are serious terrorists or serious criminals, but we don’t know how serious this woman’s criminality was in Syria, if indeed she broke UK law at all.

This procedure appeals to home secretaries because it is simpler than all the other options. You don’t have to deport, you don’t have to extradite, you don’t need the permission of a court … you just pull the rug from them before they are able to come back.

It effectively brings about two classes of citizenship. If I went to fight in Syria as a person whose parents are British I would have the absolute right to return to the country in which I had lived my whole life.

It could be seen as an abdication of responsibility to do this to someone radicalised in our country, who left when only a child and [with whom] we are relatively well-equipped to deal with, either through prosecution or de-radicalisation. If that is the way that we want to behave I think we have to be quite clear-headed about the fact that other people will do it to us too.

It is no different from a temporary exclusion order. It is more drastic of course as it will stop her from coming back to the UK.

My concern is that, at the moment, we do not have laws to adequately prosecute in cases like this. If we had a treason law, for example, that had been updated we could have a much stronger stance from which to bring her back and have her tried in the UK.

For [her baby son], it’s extremely complicated from a legal perspective – is he Dutch or British? She was married, but [there would be an] Islamic State marriage certificate, perhaps, which would not be recognised. There is a responsibility to ensure the child is given the right to a good life. I don’t think that would be possible from a refugee camp.

She has not been to Bangladesh and would have no means to survive in that country in terms of independence because she has no contacts there. When she was a 15-year-old the police were aware that she was being brainwashed and groomed by Isis, in the same way that people are sexually groomed. When she went to Syria she married a man twice her age within a few days of arriving there. It’s sexual exploitation as well as [ideological grooming].

The police, [school and] Tower Hamlets were aware she was being groomed and they did not tell her parents. That’s a shocking level of incompetence. The police gave her a letter to say they wanted to interview her, it was found in the schoolbag after she was gone.

She has said things that have been surprising. I was a police officer for 30 years and every time I had to move a dead body, it shocked and fazed me. The idea that a 19-year-old is not fazed seems bizarre to me. We need to look at what she has been through.

I’m British, born in Birmingham to a family that has worked for the British Army in three continents and I have worked tirelessly to keep my fellow citizens safe. Is my citizenship conditional?

I understand the anger of those who say Shamima Begum should not be allowed to return to the UK. But I don’t agree, for a simple reason: she was born in Britain and has British citizenship. Which other is supposed to look after her on our behalf? Syria? Another European country? Can you imagine the fury here if we took a French or Italian citizen who joined Isis?

Begum is homegrown and is our problem. It has to happen here. As for her newborn boy, he will be one of the most vulnerable British citizens in the world. Unless we have now given up on compassion and justice – and believe that the sins of the mother should be visited on an innocent baby.

What stripping Shamima Begum of her citizenship does is confirm the Isis claim that Muslims can never truly belong here in the west, and that propaganda blow was handed to them by our very own home secretary.