A Moroccan national, Rachid Aït El Hadj, convicted in 2007 for terrorist activities and stripped of his French nationality, was returned from France to Morocco, as announced on Saturday by the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, on x.
Rachid Aït El Hadj, as well as four other individuals (three Franco-Moroccans and one Franco-Turkish), were sentenced to eight years of imprisonment for their involvement in a criminal organization with a view to preparing a terrorist act. These five men were judged in particular for their links, more or less direct, with members of a jihadist group responsible for the attacks that occurred in Casablanca (Morocco) on May 16, 2003.
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These attacks led to the death of forty-five people, including three French nationals, and injured around a hundred others in attacks against a restaurant, a hotel and the premises of a Jewish association. The individuals had been released between 2009 and 2011. However, after his release, Rachid Aït El Hadj continued to cause concern among the authorities, being suspected in particular of having links with the author of an attempted attack in 2015 against a church in Villejuif, near Paris, Sid Ahmed Ghlam.
In 2015, the five individuals were stripped of their French nationality by decrees published in the Official Journal, at the request of the Minister of the Interior at the time, Bernard Cazeneuve, despite an appeal to the Council of State.
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The highest court had considered that “taking into account the nature and seriousness of the terrorist acts committed”, “the sanction of forfeiture of nationality was not disproportionate” and that “in each case, the behavior of the individual after the facts did not call into question this assessment.”
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