Moroccan imam Hassan Iquioussen to be expelled from Belgium
Imam Hassan Iquioussen, here on the left in June 2004 (Illustration image).
AFP - FRANCOIS LO PRESTI
Text by: RFI Follow
3 mins
Moroccan imam Hassan Iquioussen, exiled this summer in Belgium to escape a deportation order from France to Morocco, was placed this Tuesday evening in a Belgian detention center with a view to deportation from the territory.
This decision is considered “
scandalous
” by his lawyers.
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From the judicial field, the file moved to that of the administration, the Belgian government noting that the imam is illegally staying in Belgium and is not intended to stay there.
The expulsion plan, announced this Wednesday by the Belgian Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, Nicole de Moor, follows the refusal, repeated on Tuesday by Belgian justice, to hand over the imam to French justice in under a European arrest warrant.
The 58-year-old preacher's lawyers argued that the offense charged in France - "
evading the execution of a deportation measure
" - did not exist in Belgian law, which is a condition for a warrant of European judgment can be executed.
The Court of Tournai, at the end of October,
then
the Court of Appeal of Mons
, this Tuesday, November 15, had given them reason.
“
We are in contact with France to allow his withdrawal from the territory
,” said Nicole de Moor, Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, in a tweet, suggesting that the imam could be first handed over to the French authorities before deportation to Morocco.
No deadline was specified.
There is "
no place for foreign hate preachers in our country
", added this Flemish Christian-Democrat leader.
The hate preacher Iquioussen was locked up in a closed return center last night.
We are in contact with France to allow its withdrawal from the territory.
No place for foreign hatemongers in our country.
— Nicole de Moor (@Nicole_demoor) November 16, 2022
In a press release, she also noted that Mr. Iquioussen "
gives no sign that he wishes to return voluntarily
" to his country and "
the French authorities are still demanding his return in order to be able to send him to Morocco
".
Lucie Simon, the imam's French lawyer, judged this placement in a closed center "
purely scandalous
", believing that the political power was bypassing "
once again the judiciary
" in this case.
On Twitter, she accused the Belgian immigration administration of "
having agreed with the prosecution
" so that the file takes the administrative route.
The European arrest warrant criminal procedure is deemed illegal?
Never mind, the Belgian Foreign Office decides, after having reached an agreement with the Public Prosecutor's Office, to hand over Mr. #Iquioussen to France, thus taking the administrative route.
— Lucie Simon (@LucieSimon94) November 16, 2022
“Hate speech”
According to a police source, the imam was placed in the closed center of Vottem in the municipality of Liège, in eastern Belgium.
Hassan Iquioussen,
arrested on September 30
in the Mons region, in French-speaking Belgium and who had been under house arrest under electronic surveillance since All Saints, has been at the heart of a political and legal imbroglio for four months.
At the end of July, the French Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin announced the expulsion of this preacher from the North, on file S, for state security, by the intelligence services.
The decree signed by the minister's hand reproaches him for "
a proselytizing speech interspersed with remarks inciting hatred and discrimination and carrying a vision of Islam contrary to the values of the Republic
".
But Mr. Iquioussen could not be found when this decree – which he had challenged in court – had been definitively validated by the Council of State on August 31.
In an interview in the form of a
mea culpa
broadcast by the French daily
Le Parisien
, the imam admits that in the past he may have made "
inappropriate remarks and certain expressions which mislead (s) his thought
".
“
I am willing to accept reproaches, a trial.
I am quite willing to be condemned because it is certain and certain that I said reprehensible things.
But evicting me from the place where I was born, where I have always lived, is like uprooting an oak tree
,” he added.
Born in France, Hassan Iquioussen had decided when he came of age not to opt for French nationality.
He claims to have given it up at the age of 17 under the influence of his father and then to have tried in vain to recover it.
His five children and his 15 grandchildren are French and established in France, in the Nord department: one of his sons is an imam in Raismes, another ex-elected PS in Lourches.
(
With
AFP)
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