The man who stopped the would-be assassin of French president Jacques Chirac says he left France for Canada because of intolerance towards North Africans in the European country.

Algerian-born Mohamed Chelali was watching the annual Bastille Day parade on July 14, on the Champs-Elysees with his two children when he saw a man pull a rifle from a guitar case and fire a shot at Chirac, who was riding in an open car.

"The person was trying to shoot the president, and someone just behind him, he pushed him, and took his arm," Chelali, 45, said in a telephone interview last Thursday with Canada's Southam News .

"But after, when I heard about this person, how he had a history of being a neo-Nazi, I thought a lot about the symbolism of me — someone who was once an immigrant here — intervening to save the president."

Anti-Muslim sentiments

Chelali is a teacher in the Vancouver suburb of Langley in British Columbia province. Friends call the small man who immigrated to Canada 10 years ago after a brief stay in France, "very gentle".

Fateema Ahmed, another member of Langley's North African Muslim community, said she is proud Chelali had the courage and presence of mind to save the French president.

"It has been a very difficult year for Muslims living in the West," she said. "There has been a rise in anti-Muslim hatred in North America, but it's even worse in France, where Jean-Marie LePen has made Muslims scapegoats for every problem."

Sniper from right-wing fringe group

This week, Chirac called Chelali and three others in the crowd who overpowered suspected sniper Maxime Brunerie, 25, "to thank them for their intervention, their courage and their (cool headedness)," his office said.

French authorities say Brunerie is a member of a right-wing fringe group. Investigators say he bought the gun and took target practice outside of Paris less than a week before the incident.

He fired at least once near the Arc de Triomphe as Chirac reviewed troops from a moving, open-top jeep.

Chelali, who is vacationing in France before beginning a two-year teaching assignment in Beirut, said Chirac told him to expect an invitation to meet him at this October's 'Francophonie', the summit of French-speaking countries.

Modern-day vagabond

Because of the turmoil surrounding the recent French elections and the rise of LePen as a contender, Chelali said he appreciated the irony of an Algerian-born Muslim stepping into the hero's role.

"We were talking this morning and my dad told me that it was really symbolic how it happened — he being Algerian, since some people consider us terrorists since Sept 11," said Chelali's 15-year-old son, Tarik.

His daughter Ines, 12, was also with him at the parade.

Chelali emigrated to France as a young adult. He moved frequently over the years, according to an autobiographical sketch posted on a community Web site, becoming, as he put it, "a vagabond of modern times".

He said he finally left France for Canada, in part because of the discrimination he felt as an Algerian and a Muslim.

"There are good people and bad people everywhere. And France is a country of human rights," he said. But sometimes, well, I was treated like other people from North Africa are treated, and I'm very happy we went to Canada." — IPS