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Rabat – French authorities have stripped a 20-year old French-Moroccan national of his French citizenship.
A French court sentenced 20-year old Faycal Ait Messaoud to four years in prison in March 2018 for attempting to travel to Syria only a few days after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January 2015.
AFP quoted a judge, who said he gave Ait Messaoud a lighter sentence than the sentences given to the three other people who also attempted to reach Syria after the attacks. The judge cited his “very young age at the time of the events” as justification for the lighter sentence.
The French Ministry of Interior said that it had stripped 16 people of French nationality since 2002 due to terrorism charges, including five in 2015.
French authorities have the right to deprive people of citizenship if they are dual nationals for specific reasons including treason and terrorism
This is not the first time that France has stripped a defendant of Moroccan origin of French nationality.
In June, French authorities stripped another Moroccan-French national of his French nationality for conspiring to join terrorists in Afghanistan. The dual national was sentenced to five years in prison in 2014.
In February 2016, the English speaking magazine the Economist reported that France has “undertaken a raft of counter-terrorism measures” after the November 2017 attacks in Paris.
The website also said that many French citizens deplored French decision to strip dual citizens of French citizenship.
“Many French citizens with dual citizenship from North African countries sense that they—not Franco-Germans or Franco-Americans, say—are the only dual citizens that lawmakers really have in mind,” said the Economist.
