A few days earlier there was another headline about drones killing nine German Terror suspects…then we read that Abdul Jaber/Mohammed Yaseem/ Jalil Al Khalili etc., etc. have been identified as having been wiped out (successfully).
Why does the media persist in referring to these individuals as British/Germans/Europeans, when quite clearly they are Dual Nationals owing their allegiance to a state other than the European state which they seek to attack?
What is the UK government’s position vis-a-vis their continuing to hold British nationality, following evidence of their treasonable activities? Please don’t tell me that their citizenship can’t be revoked and they cannot be returned to their countries of origin, for fear they will be tortured/maltreated/disciminated against.
Whom do we have to thank for that piece of legislative twaddle?
Boadicea's Chariot 
I couldn’t agree more. The media seem unwilling to admit that Europe has milions of foreigners living within its borders, who may have the paperwork to make tham nationals of European countries, but are really aliens and all too often hostile aliens at that.
I often remind people who tell me that because I was born in (British) India, I must be Indian, that being born in a stable doesn’t make you a horse.
Americans seem to have less embarrassment and reticence about spelling out exactly what they are – Irish-Americans, German-Americans, Italian-Americans etc. Yet, despite having a census form which asks us to describe ourselves in a Dulux range of colours, somehow it seems mandatory to describe someone who has obtained a British passport, sinply as British. Right Brain has a British passport, through marriage to me, but she is an American, and I don’t think she would ever pretend to be otherwise.
Is there something illegal about the media referring to such terrorists as British of Pakistani/Yemeni/XYZ origin, or as Dual Nationals?
Or as naturalised XYZs? As in the case of my ex?
In law, mind, if you become a naturalised British subject, the Government does not recognise your former citizenship so you cannot, for example, use it to avoid the law. So, referring to these terrorists as British is correct, I guess.
CWJ – I have noticed in recent years a distinction in the press between a ‘British citizen’ and ‘a Briton’. If you read that the latter has been arrested somewhere, particularly in relation to security issues, you can be damned sure it ain’t Fred Arkwright from ‘Arrogate.
OZ
I am only able to hold dual citizenship because I inherited by secondary citizenship through my father. While it is easier to hold it now than in the past it still isn’t that easy… Or cheap.
If I were to sign up for military service of my own free will for any country other than Germany without proper permission I would be stripped of citizenship. If I were to take the citizenship of another country without proper permission I would be stripped of citizenship… And I’m actually ethnically German! (Well, half but that’s better than nothing!) These “Germans” are really not Germans. They’re not exactly Bertha Bettelarm from Chemnitz or Florian Eitler from Munich.
BTW. I don’t agree with ‘hyphenated’ nationals either. I can see some distinction to be made – I’m English, and our Scots members are Scottish, but we’re all British. As might be expected, I oppose the slap-dash dishing out of British passports to any Tom, Dick or Harriet who ends up on these shores and finds some bleeding heart Cherie Booth to manufacture some dubious reason why they shouldn’t be packed off back to whence they came.
I do feel quite strongly, however, that there should be one law for all and if we do give some gob-shite from an obscure shite-hole that has sod-all to do with the UK a passport, then, like it or not, ( absolutely bleedin’ not!) he or she gets exactly the same entitlements as I do. (Even if he or she either doesn’t understand or doesn’t give a tuppeny fig that the entitlements come with responsibilities.)
Right Brain had to swear an affadavit at the American Embassy, twenty years or so ago, when I “forced” her to take a British passport to avoid the hassle of having to apply for visas for her everywhere I was posted to, that she had been coerced into it – there was something in the US Constitution about swearing an oath of allegiance to a foreign power being grounds for losing your American citizenship. In any case, she obtained dispensation to possess dual nationality, at a time when it was not commonly acceptable to do so for Americans.
Changes in the nationality laws in the last fifteen years or so in Britain, have meant that my grandson, not born in Britain, fathered by my son, who was born in the UAE, where I was working at that time, combined with my having been born in India, pre-independence, means he is NOT entitled to a British passport…this seems absolutely nuts to me, when we are dishing out passports, willy-nilly, to all sorts and conditions of refugees, with not a drop of British blood in their veins.
I realized the world had changed several years ago, when a sikh Immigration Officer at Heathrow, resplendent in his turban, looking at my passport, showing birthplace as India, asked me whether I had, “the right of abode in the UK”. Somehow I managed to restrain myself!
CWJ. When my second daughter was applying to Universities when she was in the VIth form, shw was told that she would be treated as an overseas student because she had only been resident in the UK for the precedding three years for educational purposes. She was at boarding school in UK while I was still with the colours in Hong Kong!
Bravo, yet the taxman would have treated her as resident and ordinarily resident for tax purposes, had she any income from a Trust for instance.
Indeed. Imagine my conversation with the ‘Sharon’ in Kent Education Authority when she pointed out that ‘Your daughter was born in Hannover and you haven’t lived in this country since then. Sample.
Do you have my daughters application in front of you?
Yes.
Do you see the addresses I’ve lived at over the last 17 years.
Yes.
Notice anything similar about all of them?
What do you mean?
What does the last line of all of them say?
BFPO and a number, you mean?
Yes. Do you know what BFPO stands for?
No.
…
Nothing, or at least very little, surprises me any more in this country…