Convicted French terrorists face being stripped of citizenship, leaving them effectively stateless under controversial government plans, reports The Telegraph.
The proposed measure, which could be inscribed into France’s constitution, stoked heated debate across the political spectrum on Tuesday.
In the wake of the November 13 terror attacks in Paris that killed 130, president François Hollande had pledged to strip dual nationals born in France of French citizenship for “crimes against the life of the nation” – meaning they kept one passport.
However, senior members of his ruling Socialists are now proposing passing a blanket measure to include terror offenders who have only French nationality, after complaints the original move was “discriminatory”.
That would effectively leave them stateless, a move that critics say would be contrary to international agreements.
Bruno Le Roux, head of the Socialists’ parliamentary group and a close Hollande ally, said the change would target “all those who turned their arms against the state and against those who live in this country, to strip them of French nationality, whether they are dual nationals or not”.
Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, the Socialist Party leader, said “several avenues” were being discussed, including extending the measure “to all French”.
The idea was supported by Frédéric Mitterrand, a former culture minister in Nicolas Sarkozy’s former conservative government. “It must be applied to all French people, as nationality is one and indivisible. Thus there are no French French on the one hand, and on the other French people who, on the pretext that they have another nationality, are a little less French and can be thrown out,” he said.
Brice Hortefeux, Mr Sarkozy’s ex-interior minister, called it a “good move”.
However, Mr Hollande’s Green allies warned that “the right to a nationality is one of the foundations of the rule of law”.