Paris (AFP)

Gérald Darmanin on Monday asked for the reopening of the Pantin mosque (Seine-Saint-Denis) after the resignation of its rector M'hammed Henniche that the Minister of the Interior demanded.

"The association managing the mosque of Pantin has changed its leaders. I ask the prefect" of Seine-Saint-Denis "to get in touch with the new team to consider the reopening of the mosque as soon as possible", wrote on Twitter the minister, who had obtained on October 21 the closure for six months of this place of worship in the wake of the assassination of Professor Samuel Paty.

M'hammed Henniche, who had been at the head of the Muslim federation of Pantin since 2013 and recently re-elected, announced on Sunday that he had presented his resignation to the board of directors of the mosque the day before, which chose to replace him with Dramé Abderrahman.

The closure of this mosque of around 1,300 faithful had been decided because of the relay on his Facebook page of the video of a father of a student at the origin of the gear that led to the beheading of Samuel Paty.

Since this sanction and two appeals rejected in court, Gérald Darmanin had conditioned an early reopening of the mosque to the departures of M'hammed Henniche and Imam Ibrahim Doucouré, already dismissed.

The prefect of Seine-Saint-Denis, Georges-François Leclerc, had also withdrawn in November from the association which manages the mosque its cultic character, on the grounds that its activities had "violated public order", according to a mail consulted by AFP.

This measure rendered null and void the allocation by the city of Pantin of an emphyteutic lease for the construction of the future great mosque, financed to the tune of nearly one million euros by donations from the faithful.

Mr. Henniche, who has always denied the Islamist leanings that the government attributes to him, has resolved to resign to "save the emphyteutic lease of the new mosque" and so "that the faithful can find their mosque" whose reopening was scheduled. April 15.

A 50-year-old Muslim conservative, Mr. Henniche, an entrepreneur by profession, was for twenty years a privileged interlocutor of the public authorities, including Nicolas Sarkozy when he was president.

He retains his duties as Secretary General of the Union of Muslim Associations of Seine-Saint-Denis (UAM 93).

© 2021 AFP