LONDON, May 15 (UPI) -- A London immigration commission has ruled an Algerian man cleared in a ricin poison attack plot cannot be kicked out of England on national security grounds.
Moloud Sihali is free to seek a claim for refugee status following Monday's decision from the Special Immigration Appeal Commission, The Daily Mail reported.
The British government wanted to deport Sihali and said he was a threat to national security. But the immigration panel said there was an "absence of any evidence or intelligence that (Sihali) has ever been a principled Islamic extremist."
Sihali, who used a fake passport to enter England sometime after 1997, has served a 15-month jail sentence on a passport charge. He was charged with and cleared of working on a plot to kill dozens of people in London with the poison ricin.
Monday's immigration ruling said Sihali had "provided assistance for activities which, in fact, had a terrorist purpose and had lied about them" but that he was not a threat to national security, the Daily Mail reported.
Sihali's lawyer, Natalia Garcia, said her client is "an entirely innocent man."
