Rachid Aït El Hadj, a Moroccan convicted in 2007 for terrorism and stripped of French nationality, was deported to Morocco, Gérald Darmanin said on Saturday.
“Firmness. Thank you to the prefects, police officers, gendarmes and agents of the intelligence services. We are trying hard, but the efforts are paying off to protect France,” tweeted the Minister of the Interior under an article in Figaro revealing this expulsion.
Rachid Aït El Hadj was sentenced, with four other men (three Franco-Moroccans and one Franco-Turk), to eight years in prison in 2007 for his “participation in a criminal association with a view to preparing a terrorist act “.
The five men were notably judged for their more or less direct links with members of a jihadist group responsible for the attacks in Casablanca (Morocco) on May 16, 2003. 45 people were killed, including three French people, and around a hundred people injured. in several attacks carried out against a restaurant, a hotel and the premises of a Jewish association.
They were released between 2009 and 2011.
Stripped of French nationality in 2015
Rachid Aït El Hadj, however, continued to worry the authorities upon his release from detention, being notably suspected of having maintained links with the author of the failed attack against a church in Villejuif in 2015, Sid Ahmed Ghlam.
The five men were stripped of French nationality in 2015 by decrees published in Official newspaper, at the request of the Minister of the Interior at the time Bernard Cazeneuve, despite an appeal to the Council of State.
The supreme court had considered “that due to the nature and seriousness of the acts of terrorism committed”, “the sanction of forfeiture of nationality had not been disproportionate” and that “in each case, the behavior of the person concerned after the facts did not allow this assessment to be called into question.”