The Australian government on Thursday announced plans to make changes in the current Australian Citizenship Act to strip citizenship from people with dual nationality convicted of terrorism.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd November, 2018) The Australian government on Thursday announced plans to make changes in the current Australian Citizenship Act to strip citizenship from people with dual nationality convicted of terrorism."The Government will seek to change the Australian Citizenship Act so dual citizens convicted of a terrorism offence in Australia could lose Australian citizenship irrespective of the sentence they receive," the government said in a published statement.
According to the press release, under the current law citizenship can only be stripped from people with dual citizenship who have been sentenced to jail for six years or more and the new changes will not provide conditions on the period of imprisonment.
Australian Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton stressed that nine people had been already deprived of their citizenship under the existing legislation due to their connection with terrorist organizations and more than 50 could lose it due to the new changes.
The new limitations reportedly will also prevent the return of Australian foreign fighters, who previously visited conflict-affected zones, such as Syria and Iraq.
The toughening of the law followed the recent terrorist attack committed in Melbourne on November 9. A man attacked a group of people with a knife after a car burst into flames. The police said that the attacker had been arrested, adding that at least one person had died of wounds and two people had been hospitalized. The police later said that they were treating the attack as a terrorism incident.
