Ali Charaf Damache pleaded guilty in Waterford to sending a menacing telephone message to an American lawyer and received three years of immediate Irish custody. Ireland then tried and failed to extradite him to the United States. After his release he travelled to Spain, was extradited from there, pleaded guilty to a US terrorism charge and received 15 years. Ireland’s subsequent attempt to revoke his naturalisation ended in a Supreme Court ruling that the statutory procedure lacked the independence required by fair process.

3 yearsImmediate Irish custody; a fourth year was suspended.
15 yearsSeparate US federal sentence, not an Irish sentence.
€297,216Nominal Irish prison-space benchmark for three years.

The Irish offence and sentence

Damache was born in Algeria, arrived in Ireland in July 2000 and became a naturalised Irish citizen in November 2008 through his marriage to an Irish woman. On 9 January 2010, a menacing call was made from Waterford to Michigan lawyer Majed Moughni, who had organised a rally against terrorism. The Circuit Court prosecution originally included a threat-to-kill allegation and the menacing-message charge.

On the sixth day of his trial in February 2013, Damache pleaded guilty to sending the menacing telephone message. Waterford Circuit Criminal Court imposed four years’ imprisonment with the final year suspended. Contemporary reporting records that time already served meant he was released from that sentence and immediately rearrested on the American extradition warrant.

The conviction must be stated precisely. The Irish sentence was for the menacing-message offence. It was not an Irish terrorism conviction, and this file does not relabel it as one.

A prosecution that changed Irish search-warrant law

The Garda search of Damache’s home had been authorised under section 29(1) of the Offences Against the State Act 1939 by a senior Garda officer who was participating in the investigation. In February 2012, the Supreme Court held that this did not provide the independent, judicial assessment required before a home could be searched and declared the provision unconstitutional.

That judgment was delivered during Damache’s Irish prosecution. Its significance extended well beyond him: the Oireachtas enacted replacement search-warrant legislation after the ruling. The State still secured the menacing-message guilty plea the following year.

Ireland refused extradition; Spain later surrendered him

American prosecutors charged Damache with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and attempted identity theft to facilitate international terrorism. In May 2015, the Irish High Court refused the United States’ extradition request. Ms Justice Aileen Donnelly held that the Irish Director of Public Prosecutions had not properly addressed the question of whether Ireland was the appropriate place to prosecute the alleged conduct.

The refusal was not an acquittal on the American allegations. After Damache was released in Ireland, he travelled to Spain. Spanish authorities arrested him and extradited him to the United States in 2017.

In July 2018, he pleaded guilty in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to conspiring to provide material support and resources to terrorists. On 30 October 2018, a federal judge sentenced him to 15 years. The US Department of Justice said the conspiracy involved recruiting and coordinating people in Europe and the United States for violent activity. That conviction and sentence belong to the American proceeding and are kept separate from his Irish conviction throughout this file.

The attempt to revoke his Irish naturalisation

Following the US guilty plea, the Minister for Justice notified Damache of an intention to revoke his certificate of naturalisation on the ground that he had failed in his duty of fidelity to the nation and loyalty to the State. Damache challenged the process.

The Supreme Court held that revocation of naturalisation is an executive, rather than exclusively judicial, function. But it also found the procedure then contained in section 19 of the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956 constitutionally defective. Under that system, a committee appointed by the Minister could investigate and report, yet the Minister initiated the case and retained the final decision. The court concluded that the procedure did not provide the independent decision-making required by natural justice.

The decision did not declare that naturalised citizenship can never be revoked. It meant that revocation required a constitutionally fair process. The Oireachtas enacted a replacement procedure in 2024, including provision for an independent Committee of Inquiry, and Part 3 was commenced in 2025. In April 2025, The Irish Times reported that the Government intended to restart action in Damache’s case. The reviewed public record does not establish that a new process has finished or that his Irish citizenship has actually been revoked. This file therefore records the latest located position as an announced intention, not a completed revocation.

Chronology

  • July 2000: Damache arrives in Ireland.
  • November 2008: He is naturalised as an Irish citizen following marriage to an Irish woman.
  • 9 January 2010: The menacing call is made from Waterford to a lawyer in Michigan.
  • 23 February 2012: The Supreme Court declares the section 29(1) search-warrant regime unconstitutional in his case.
  • February 2013: Damache pleads guilty to the menacing-message charge and receives four years, with the final year suspended.
  • 21 May 2015: The High Court refuses the American extradition request.
  • 2017: Spain extradites him to the United States.
  • July–October 2018: He pleads guilty to the US material-support conspiracy and receives a 15-year federal sentence.
  • 2018: The Minister begins a process intended to revoke his Irish naturalisation.
  • 2020–2021: The Supreme Court finds the existing revocation procedure constitutionally defective and makes the resulting declaration.
  • 2024–2025: The Oireachtas creates a replacement process and the relevant provisions commence.
  • April 2025: The Government is reported to intend renewed revocation action; no completed outcome was located by the record-check date.

Public-cost boundary

Applying the Irish Prison Service’s 2024 average of €99,072 per available staffed prison space to the three-year immediate portion of the Irish sentence produces a €297,216 nominal face-value benchmark.

This is not an invoice, an audited marginal cost or proof that precisely three additional years of expenditure arose. The sentence was backdated through credit for time already served, and the located sources do not supply a complete day-by-day remand, remission or sentence-administration record. The suspended fourth year is excluded. The 15-year US sentence is also excluded because it is not Irish custody. Garda, prosecution, court, legal-aid, extradition, legislation, citizenship-review and victim costs remain unquantified.

Questions the State should answer

  1. Why was the appropriate forum for the American allegations not resolved before the failed Irish extradition proceeding?
  2. What was the total Irish public cost of the prosecution, extradition litigation and citizenship litigation?
  3. Has a fresh revocation notice been served under the procedure commenced in 2025?
  4. What is the present legal status of the earlier revocation proposal?
  5. What system now ensures that search warrants and citizenship-revocation inquiries meet the independence standards identified by the Supreme Court?

Name, citizenship and jurisdiction limits

The Irish judgments use Ali Charaf Damache. Some contemporary reports and records use Ali Charafe Damache; the variant is included for identity clarity. He was Algerian-born and became a naturalised Irish citizen in 2008. No completed revocation, present prison location, eventual release date, removal destination or return to Ireland is inferred. The Irish menacing-message conviction and the later US terrorism conviction are separate adjudicated matters in separate jurisdictions.

Sources

Record checked: 1 August 2026. The two convictions and jurisdictions are kept distinct; the benchmark covers only the immediate Irish sentence; and no completed citizenship revocation is asserted.