The Harper government has launched a procedure to strip Fateh Kamel of his Canadian citizenship, MontrealÂ’s La Presse reported today.Kamel, who was born in Algeria, was condemned in France in 2001 to an 8-year jail term for supplying false passports to Islamic terrorists and "participating in a criminal association for the purposes of preparing acts of terrorism." He was released in January 2005 for good behaviour after serving only six years and immediately returned to Montreal where he is still residing. At the time, opposition national security critic Peter MacKay who is now Minister of Foreign Affairs called for stripping Kamel of his Canadian citizenship.
According to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Kamel had ties to Osama bin Laden and was the ringleader of a Montreal-based Algerian Jihadi cell, which intended to blow up Los Angeles International Airport in 1999. Still according to CSIS, “he played a central role in the wave of terrorist attacks that erupted in France toward the middle of the 1990s, notably the plot to commit bomb attacks in Paris metro stations and a series of attacks in the city of Roubaix, in northern France”.
In order to revoke his citizenship, the government will have to prove that Kamel obtained the Canadian citizenship illegally by making false statements on his past. Late last year, Kamel was denied a passport on security grounds.