An Algerian national in France who raped a child has been granted refugee status after claiming he would be persecuted in his home country due to his trans identity.
The criminal, referred to in court documents as Medhi F., was convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old minor in 2019 and sentenced to four years in prison, Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD) reported. In addition, Medhi F. was supposed to be deported from France.
But in 2020, Medhi applied for asylum from the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA), claiming he couldn’t return to Algeria because he would face persecution as a trans-identifying male. OFPRA refused his request, citing a section of the French code that states that refugee status can be refused or terminated if the person asking “has been convicted in France … either for a crime or for an offense constituting an act of…
