ECHR Upholds France’s Decision to Strip Citizenship from Terror Suspects

In their defense, these childhood friends from working-class neighborhoods in the Yvelines region near Paris, who became French between 1991 and 2001, invoked before the ECHR the right to respect for their private and family life. They also pleaded not to be tried or punished twice for the same acts.

In a press release, the ECHR noted that "terrorist violence in itself constitutes a serious threat to human rights". It also noted that this deprivation of nationality did not render them stateless, as they all have another nationality. For the Court, "the loss of French nationality did not automatically entail removal from the territory".

Sentenced in 2007 to prison terms of 6 to 8 years for "participation in a criminal association with a view to preparing a terrorist act", these four French citizens of Moroccan origin were notably judged for their more or less direct links with the Moroccan Islamic Fighting Group, responsible for the Casablanca attacks of May 16, 2003 in which 45 people were killed, including three French, and about a hundred were injured.