U.S. Supreme Court denies appeal of IS accomplice, once US citizen

The Supreme Court of the United States (US) denied hearing an appeal, where a woman had left her home in Alabama to support and work for Islamic State terror group. This appeal was made as she later expressed regret and wanted to come home to the US.

The justices refused to hear Hoda Muthana's case during the hearing. Her appeal was based on the fact that she was born in New Jersey in the year 1994 to a Yemeni diplomat. She grew up in Alabama near Birmingham. Muthana fled the United States in 2014 to join the Islamic State after getting radicalised online.

The US authorities had ruled she was no longer a US citizen after she joined the Islamic State terror group and had withdrawn her passport, citing her father's status as a diplomat at the time of her birth. Her family has filed a lawsuit to allow her to return to the United States.
Despite her birth in the United States, a federal judge found in 2019 that the US government had established that Muthana was not a citizen. They claimed that diplomats' children do not have the right to citizenship at birth. As a result, the family's attorneys filed an appeal, claiming that her father was no longer a UN diplomat before her birth, that makes her an automatic citizen.

In her defence, Muthana stated that she regretted her decision to join the Islamic State terror group and wished to return to the United States with her toddler kid, the son of a guy she met while living with the group (who subsequently died).

Under former US President Barack Obama, the decision to cancel her passport was taken. The issue drew significant attention, with even former President Donald Trump tweeting that he had told the secretary of state not to let her return to the country. (AP/PR)

Source: Associated Press

(Keywords: United Nations, United States, Islam, Islamic State Terror Group, Terrorism, Hoda Muthana