ASTANA: Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has said Kazakhs who join the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group will be deprived of their citizenship, MIR international TV channel reported on Tuesday.
"This is a compulsory measure. First of all, it is necessary to take such measures to assure that people do not join the ranks of terrorists," Xinhua news agency quoted Nazarbayev as saying.
"We tried to conduct preventive work with those who returned from the IS but this did not work, so we decided to close their way home," he added.
The president said 500 to 600 people from Kazakhstan and approximately 5,000 from the states of the former Soviet Union have joined the terrorist organisation.
According to Kazakh law, a person deprived of citizenship will not lose the right to live in the territory of Kazakhstan.