Privação da nacionalidade (Art 15 + acessório de segurança Art 14 Bis/15-A)

AE-XCT-01 is the deprivation-of-nationality route under the United Arab Emirates nationality regime: the State-imposed loss of Emirati nationality, as distinct from any voluntary surrender (which UAE law does not provide). It sits in Chapter Two of Federal Law No. 17 of 1972 ('Loss, Deprivation, Withdrawal and Recovery of Nationality'). The route aggregates three statutory deprivation pillars: (1) the original, mandatory administrative deprivation grounds of Art 15 — unauthorized foreign military service after a refusal to leave (Art 15(a)), acting for the benefit of a hostile nation (Art 15(b)), and willingly acquiring a foreign nationality (Art 15(c)); (2) the 2017-inserted security-conviction accessory penalty of Art 14 Bis, under which a final criminal conviction for terrorism or external-security offences 'shall result in the deprivation or withdrawal of the nationality as an accessory penalty', triable in the Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeal with appeal to the Federal Supreme Court; and (3) the 2017-inserted Art 15 Bis, a discretionary deprivation/withdrawal for internal-security convictions. Deprivation reaches nationals 'whether [they have] acquired nationality by operation of law, naturalization or affiliation' (Art 14 Bis), making it broader in personal scope than the Art 16 withdrawal route (which targets only naturalized/affiliated nationals). It is effected by Federal decree and, save for the Art 14 Bis judicial channel, 'may not be contested' (Art 20). The constitutional ceiling is Art 8 of the Constitution: a citizen's nationality 'may not be divested or withdrawn except in exceptional events as provided in Law.' Because the UAE is a non-party to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, no treaty bar prevents deprivation from rendering a person stateless.

'Eligibility' for a deprivation route means the class of persons exposed to it and the triggering grounds — not an applicant's qualification. Personal scope differs by pillar. Art 15 deprivation reaches 'a national' without qualifying how nationality was acquired, so on its face it applies to nationals by operation of law (Art 2 descent/foundling), by naturalization (Arts 5-9, 12 Bis) and by affiliation alike; in practice Art 15(c) (willing foreign naturalization) is the limb most likely to touch nationals by operation of law. Art 14 Bis is expressly trans-categorical: it applies to a national 'whether he has acquired nationality by operation of law, naturalization or affiliation', so even a born Emirati can be deprived as an accessory penalty for a terrorism or external-security conviction. Art 15 Bis (internal security) likewise speaks of 'a national' without category restriction. This breadth is the central structural feature that distinguishes AE-XCT-01 from AE-XCT-02 (Art 16 withdrawal), which is confined to nationals 'who [have] acquired it by naturalization or by affiliation': nationals by operation of law cannot lose nationality under Art 16's residence-abroad, fraud, foreign-rights or moral-turpitude grounds, but they remain exposed under Arts 14 Bis/15/15 Bis. The triggering 'eligibility' conditions are therefore: (Art 15) a factual finding of unauthorized foreign military service plus refusal to leave, or of acting for a hostile nation, or of willing foreign naturalization; (Art 14 Bis) a final conviction for a listed terrorism/external-security offence; (Art 15 Bis) a final conviction for an internal-security offence. The grant of nationality being 'only once' (Art 12) and federal-exclusive (Const Art 120(16)) frames who can be reached.

Two procedural tracks coexist. The administrative track (Art 15 deprivation; Art 15 Bis discretionary deprivation; and Art 16-style withdrawal for naturalized persons) culminates in a Federal decree under Art 20: 'granting, deprivation, withdrawal and recovery of nationality shall be by a Federal decree and it may not be contested.' Per Constitution Art 114, such a decree issues only on Cabinet approval and ratification by the President or Supreme Council, locating the decision in the federal executive. There is no statutory appeal from an Art 15/15 Bis/16 deprivation decree — Art 20's 'may not be contested' bars ordinary challenge. The judicial track is unique to Art 14 Bis: 'Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeal shall have the competence to hear the crimes provided for in paragraphs (1 and 2) of this Article, and the competent prosecution shall refer such offences to it. The Minister of Justice shall form one or more specialized circuits in Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeal to decide upon these crimes. The judgment of the Court shall be contestable before the Federal Supreme Court in accordance with the law'. Here the deprivation is an accessory penalty pronounced by a criminal court as part of a conviction, and the route into it is prosecutorial referral, not an executive decree; the defendant has a conviction trial plus an appeal to the apex court (Const Art 101: an FSC judgment 'shall be final and binding upon everyone'). Recovery, where it is later granted, runs by Federal decree under Art 20 para 2 ('the nationality may be returned to a person who has been deprived thereof'), linking AE-XCT-01 to AE-RST-01.

No statutory deprivation timeline, processing window, or fee is gazetted, and none may be asserted: Art 45 of Law 17/1972 delegates the specification of any fees to the Cabinet ('the Cabinet shall specify any fees that shall be collected'), and Art 19 delegates the procedural system to the Executive Regulations; the decoded AE primary corpus contains no Cabinet fee/timeline instrument (carrying A6-02/03 — 'do NOT assert'). The only time-bound figures on the face of the statute concern grant, not loss: Art 9 para 3 fixes the effective date of a nationality grant at 'the date of completion of the nationality documents', and Art 44 Bis requires the Authority to complete grant-decree procedures 'within a maximum period of one year from the date of issuance of such decrees'. For the deprivation track specifically, the operative temporal facts are (i) the security-deprivation pillars (Arts 14 Bis/15 Bis) are conditioned on a conviction reaching finality — i.e. the timeline is the criminal proceeding's duration plus appeals, not a nationality-administration clock; and (ii) the Art 15 administrative grounds carry no statutory limitation period, so the deprivation power is not time-barred on the face of the text. Any practitioner-facing 'how long does deprivation take' question therefore resolves to a positive disconfirmation: the statute fixes no figure, the implementing instruments are not in the decoded corpus, and inventing a number would breach the evidence discipline.