PARIS: France’s top legal body ruled on Friday that stripping a binational convicted militant of his French nationality was lawful, after his lawyer challenged the move just as the country ups its fight against extremism.

The case brought in front of the Constitutional Council comes after the government announced a series of anti-terror measures following the deadly Paris attacks and mulls whether to use this move more widely.

Ahmed Sahnouni, a Moroccan naturalized by France in 2003, was convicted and handed a seven-year prison term in March 2013 for activities in a terror organization and stripped of his citizenship in May last year.

Born in Casablanca in 1970, Sahnouni was convicted for having overseen recruitment networks of aspiring militants to Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and the Sahel region of North Africa, raising funds for them and overseeing the operational coordination of volunteers once on the ground.