The perpetrator of the first jihadist attack in a prison in France, Bilal Taghi, who was sentenced in 2019 to 28 years in prison for attempting to kill two guards in a prison in the Paris region, was stripped of French citizenship, according to a decree published today in the Official Gazette, Agence France-Presse reported, quoted by BTA.
"By decree of August 5, 2024, with the approval of the Council of State (to the Ministry of Justice - ed. note), Bilal Taghi is deprived of French citizenship", the decree says.
On September 4, 2016, this 32-year-old man, who also has Moroccan citizenship, tried to kill two guards at a prison in Osny, northwest of Paris, with a homemade cold weapon on behalf of the "Islamic State" group. (IS) while serving a five-year prison sentence after a foiled attempt to travel to Syria.
The Ardennes-born man, who was 24 at the time of the attack, immediately admitted that he had wanted to kill a representative of the French state on behalf of IS and said he would do it again if he had the "opportunity", before assuring that he had renounced the jihadist ideology of the IS group during the trial.
The attack, carried out in the heart of an "institution dedicated" to deradicalization, has unsettled the prison administration and led to changes in the attitude towards radicalized prisoners in the prison, AFP reports.