Paris -- A musician with the French glam rock group Fancy has been refused a visa for the United States, probably because he has the same name as a slain al-Qaeda operative, Fancy's record label said yesterday Thursday.
Guitarist Mohamed Yamani and the three other band members applied for visas to go on a U.S. tour in March. The three others got their visas in late February but Yamani was refused, a spokesman for the record label Exclaim told AFP.
He said that the U.S. consulate in Paris had declined to give a reason for the refusal, saying only that U.S. authorities had to "clarify the name" of the guitarist, who was born in France and holds a French passport.
It was the entourage of the group who spotted Internet information about Abu Mohamed Al Yamani - reportedly an al-Qaeda envoy in Algeria and reported by the Algerian press to have been killed by security forces in 2006 - and concluded that the refusal was probably due to the similarity in the names.
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Fancy, which plays a mix of glam rock, funk and soul, had been booked to support the French electro duo Justice on the U.S. tour.
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