Australian government overturns decision to cancel citizenship of man on death row in Iraq

The Department of Home Affairs has overturned a decision to cancel the citizenship of a former Sydney man on death row in Iraq after it ruled the law used to strip him of his Australian citizenship was invalid.

The department has now revealed that 18 other Australians had their citizenship illegally revoked.

Guardian Australia reported in June that lawyers for Ahmad Merhi and his family believed the 2018 decision to cancel his citizenship after he had been sentenced to death by hanging was unlawful, and they appealed on his behalf to the Albanese government.

The letter also made clear that the decision about the validity of the laws occurred independently of the high court ruling in the case of Delil Alexander, a Turkish citizen whose Australian citizenship was cancelled in July 2021.

Khan says Iraq is routinely executing those who have been sentenced to death with little warning, and he has also asked the Australian government to assist Merhi, given the recent change in his citizenship status.

Merhi travelled to Syria in 2014 and was captured in the country in 2017. He was then transferred by US forces to Iraq, one of a series of prisoner transfers that concerned human rights groups.

In Iraq, Merhi says he was coerced into confessing to terrorism charges and in November 2018 he was sentenced to death by hanging.

His citizenship was cancelled the month after he was sentenced. Merhi says he is eligible for Lebanese citizenship but he has never held it.

The former Melbourne woman Zehra Duman launched a high court challenge to her citizenship cancellation under former section 35, but, unlike Merhi, she held citizenship of another country, Turkey, at the time the cancellation was made.

Guardian Australia is also aware of another Melbourne woman detained in Syria with her family who also had her Australian citizenship cancelled under former section 35, with the government at the time claiming she was also a citizen of Lebanon.

But concerns were raised about the counterproductive consequences of the laws, including by the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, and they were amended in 2020.