Hawzah News Agency (Copenhaghen, Denmark) -Children born to Danish Islamic State members in Syria will no longer automatically receive Danish citizenship, the country's immigration ministry has ruled in a decision which has drawn strong criticism from human rights groups.
"Their parents have turned their back on Denmark, so there is no reason why their children should become Danish citizens," the country's immigration minister Inger Stojberg said in a statement on Thursday.
"These people have launched a war against democracy, freedom and everything that we in Denmark stand for, and they do not belong anywhere in Denmark."
The controversial ruling is part of a deal struck between Denmark's centre-right government and the far-Right Danish People's Party. The agreement will also allow dual citizens who travelled to Syria or Iraq to fight for a terrorist organisation to be stripped of citizenship without trial.
The government will then be able to deprive them of their citizenship with a simple administrative order, meaning it will no longer need to bring them back to Denmark for a trial.
"An administrative disqualification will in principle be possible while the person in question is still abroad," the ministry explained in its statement.
Ms Stojberg told the Danish news agency Ritzau that she expected the bill to pass easily through parliament, although as yet no date has been set for the vote.
"It's hard for me to believe that some parties in parliament are not willing to protect Denmark," she said.
The international children's charity Unicef warned that the country risked "punishing children for their parents' sins", adding that the ruling might be in breach of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The Danish government believes there are about 40 Daesh members with links to Denmark who are still in Syria, of whom about ten have been captured by Kurdish or Syrian government forces. It has no estimates of the number of children born to Danish citizens in former Islamic State territory.