French authorities deported Rachid Aït El Hadj, a 48-year-old Moroccan national who had been convicted in France of terrorism in 2007, to Morocco, on Saturday, according to a tweet by French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on X.
In 2007, El Hadj, who had grown up in the western suburbs of Paris, had been convicted along with four others, three French-Moroccans and a French-Turk, of “participation in a criminal conspiracy to commit a terrorist act.”
The conviction stemmed from their association with a jihadist group responsible for the May 16, 2003, attacks in Casablanca, Morocco, where 45 people, including three French citizens, were killed, and around a hundred others were injured in multiple attacks targeting a restaurant, a hotel, and a Jewish association’s premises.
They were released between 2009 and 2011, after having served prison sentences. In 2015, they were all stripped of their French nationality by then-Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, citing the severity of their terrorist acts and their post-release behavior.
According to France’s intelligence services, even years after the quartet’s release, authorities remained concerned about possible terrorist acts.
El Hadj, for example, is suspected of having links with Sid Ahmed Ghlam, the perpetrator of the failed attack on a church in Villejuif, as well as Larossi Abballa, author of the Magnanville attack in which police officers Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and his partner, Jessica Schneider, were murdered.
Despite the concerns, Rachid remained on French territory until March 22 this year when the Head of the prefecture of Yvelines issued a deportation order.
The border police arrested El Hadj at dawn on Saturday, and his flight to Morocco left about midday, according to French newspaper LeFigaro.