The decision comes exactly a week after the Arras attack in which Mohammed Mogouchkov, originally from the Russian Caucasus and raised in France, killed a French teacher, Dominique Bernard, and injured three other people. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, stripped of his French nationality a 25-year-old dual national, born in Chechnya and convicted several times for acts linked to terrorism, according to a decree published Friday October 20 in the Official Journal.
The young man stripped of his nationality had become French following the naturalization of his mother in 2009, and also has Russian nationality. In legal proceedings, he declared that he had arrived in France with his parents at the age of three.
The decree, signed by the minister, mentions a nine-year prison sentence handed down against the young man by the Paris Court of Appeal in January 2020 for acts of “participation in a criminal association with a view to preparation of an act of terrorism”, and another conviction, for acts of the same nature but committed while he was a minor, pronounced by the Paris children’s court in March 2019 and confirmed on appeal.
“Direct provocation to an act of terrorism”
The young man having been convicted “for a crime or misdemeanor constituting an act of terrorism”, and for acts committed within 15 years from the date of acquisition of French nationality, “the conditions allowing (him) to be revoked of French nationality must be considered as met”, indicates the decree. “It will be up to the competent authorities to then assess his right to stay on French territory.”
In November 2017, the young man was also sentenced to five years in prison by the Nancy High Court for “apology for an act of terrorism” and “direct provocation to an act of terrorism” , according to a judgment consulted by Agence France-Presse.
On the evening of the Arras attack, Gérald Darmanin expressed on TF1 his wish to be able to “expel all those who, even at the age of two or three, are foreigners and deserve to return to their country of origin because they do not respect the rules of the Republic.” “We are condemned by the ECHR because I sent Russian and Chechen nationals back to their country, we do it anyway, the protection of the French takes precedence over these rules,” he added.
