THE FRENCH interior minister has suggested amending the law to enable the state to strip polygamists of their French citizenship.
Brice Hortefeux was speaking after a judge filed preliminary charges of fraud against an Algerian-born man whom the authorities suspect of polygamy.
Liès Hebbadj from Nantes came to public attention in April when he defended his wife after she was fined for driving while wearing a face veil, but prosecutors allege he has four wives and has been claiming too much money in single-parent allowances.
The charges against him relate to fraud and not polygamy, however.
Mr Hebbadj, who was naturalised when he married a French woman in 1999, denies having more than one wife and says other women who gave birth to his children – the government says he is the father of 14 – were mistresses.
“If one can be stripped of one’s French nationality for having mistresses, then many Frenchmen could lose theirs,” he remarked.
“The definition of polygamy in the penal code is not adapted to the reality,” Mr Hortefeux said yesterday, as “almost nobody is polygamous under the law in France”.
He said the law did not take into account religious marriages or domestic arrangements that constituted “de facto polygamy”.
Declaring that he would propose to government a change in the statute, Mr Hortefeux suggested it was not “natural” that a foreigner who was naturalised on the basis of marriage to a French citizen would be allowed to retain French citizenship if he subsequently “lived in a de facto polygamous situation, abusing the social assistance system”.
Citing an official study, the minister claimed that between 16,000 and 20,000 families were living in de facto polygamous arrangements in France.
However, some experts said the data on which those figures were compiled was up to 15 years old.