The Independent on Saturday published a feature article interviewing the parents of Mohamed Sakr, a British-Egyptian citizen who was stripped of his British citizenship and subsequently killed in a drone attack in Somalia last February.

The paper earlier published the findings of a Bureau of Investigative Journalism study on the revocation of British citizenship from dual nationals suspected of “involvement in terrorist activities”. The Bureau found that “Home Secretary Theresa May has ramped up the use of powers allowing her to strip UK citizenship from dual nationals without first proving wrong-doing in the courts.”

Sakr’s parents question the evidence proving their son was "involved in terrorism-related activity".

"Do they have any evidence against them that they have been involved in this or that? I haven't seen it. And they haven't come up with it," says Mr Sakr.

"This is the hardest time we have ever come across in our family life,' Mr Sakr said in tears.

"I'll never stop blaming the British Government for what they did to my son. They broke my family."

"It never crossed my mind that something here in Britain would happen like this, especially as Mohamed had no other passport, no other nationality. He was brought up here: all his life is here," his mother said"

Marco Scalvini, in an essay for Open Democracy, writes of the concerns expressed by human rights groups on the ‘arbitrary’ powers to strip citizenship including:

1) deprivation of citizenship is exercised by the Home Secretary on the grounds of the “the public good” without proving a breach of law; 2) the revocation is carried out without any sort of due process or transparency; 3) those who are deprived of their citizenship have only 28 days to appeal to a court before being deported; 4) deprivation is also applied to those who were born and raised in the UK and have never been charged with any crime.

Noting the use of the powers in particular against those who hold dual nationality, Scalvini notes:

“Before 9/11, those immigrants who were naturalized and suspected of being disloyal could be stripped of their passport, while native-born nationals have been always considered safe. In fact, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that 5 of the 21 people deprived of their citizenships were actually born in the UK. At the same time, citizenship deprivation can be only applied to dual nationals in order to avoid statelessness, as the UK adopted the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.”

BBC Radio 4 in the programme, Law in Action, last Thursday explored the issue in relation to Mahdi Hashi, another British citizen stripped of citizenship and facing trial in the US on terrorism charges.

"My son has been abandoned by the British authorities," his father, Mohamed Hashi, told Law in Action.

"It's easier for them just to pass him to the Americans instead of extraditing him later on."

"There has been no public outrage at the introduction of simple, near-arbitrary deprivation of British citizenship, even for the British-born," says Caroline Sawyer, a senior lecturer in law at Victoria University of Wellington, in the Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law.”

You can still catch the Radio 4 programme here.

BBC News reported on the exhibition, London Veil, featuring hijab-wearers of all colours and styles, which was on display at London's Festival Hall last Friday and Sunday, 8th and 10th March.

As part of the Women of the World Festival at London's South Bank, the exhibition "[gave] prominence to young Muslim women in London by documenting and celebrating the expression of their individual identities as interpreted through their vibrant and varied hijab styles and adornments."

You can watch the BBC News report here.

The Daily Record covers the courageous story of eight year old Ayesha Siddiqui who has been nominated for the Daily Record Our Heroes Award.

Ayesha, a leukaemia patient, has, with the help of her parents, raised £172,000 for the bone marrow charity, Anthony Nolan, making her "one of the biggest single fundraisers in the history of the charity".

Ayesha’s parents are trying to encourage people from all backgrounds to sign up for the bone marrow donor register but are “particularly keen to recruit ethnic minority donors as they are under-represented”.

You can read the feature article here and donate to the appeal at www.virginmoneygiving.com/Ayeshaappeal

Former CIA officer, Valerie Plame, and US diplomat, Joe Wilson, in a guest column in The Guardian today reflect on the ‘dodgy dossier’ and the Bush Administration’s claims of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ which prompted the US-led invasion of Iraq ten years ago.

Noting the dissonance between what CIA intelligence revealed and the claims made by Bush officials, Plame and Wilson observe:

“…nearly 60% of Americans now [say] that the Iraq war was a mistake; more than 70% of the British public agree. We owe it to ourselves and to our partners in the "coalition of the willing" to confront the fact that, when it mattered a decade ago, our Congress, our press, and we as citizens were not vigilant enough in holding our government to account for its statements and actions.

“We did not do nearly enough to prevent this tragedy perpetrated on Iraq, on the world, and on ourselves.”

The UK’s own inquiry into the events which led to the invasion of Iraq, the Chilcot Inquiry, is yet to release its final report amid accusations that key documents have been withheld from the Inquiry on security grounds.