IQUIOUSSEN. Actively sought after, Imam Hassan Iquioussen, subject to deportation proceedings, is said to have fled France. Why is he implicated by Gérald Darmanin? The summary of the case.
[Mis à jour le 2 septembre 2022 à 14h48] A barely believable outcome in an already incredible affair. Targeted by an expulsion procedure from France, Imam Hassan Iquioussen fled and has not been found since Tuesday August 30, 2022, the date on which the police arrived at his home in Lourches (North), near Valenciennes. . The police had come to arrest this preacher reputed to be close to the Muslim Brotherhood to enforce the decision of the Ministry of the Interior to send the imam back to Morocco, after legal disputes. But the 58-year-old man vanished. Thus, a European arrest warrant was issued against him so that he could be arrested, even if Gérald Darmanin, at the origin of the procedure against the imam, considered that “it is a very good thing that he is no longer in France.” Who is this 50-year-old at the heart of a media and legal storm this summer? Why is he subject to eviction proceedings? The summary of the case.
The affair began when Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, announced on July 28, 2022, on Twitter: “This preacher has been making hate speech (read below) against the values of France for years, contrary to our principles of secularism and equality between women and men. He will be expelled from French territory.” A ministerial order of expulsion was then launched against Hassan Iquioussen.
After legal upheavals ended before the Council of State, which finally validated the expulsion procedure, a new difficulty came to compromise the expulsion of the preacher, before his flight was discovered: Morocco, which was to welcome him. , had suspended his consular pass delivered on August 1 – and normally valid for 60 days – but above all essential for the expulsion of a foreigner in an irregular situation. The Moroccan decision came on the same day as the validation of the eviction notice, greatly upsetting the Interior Ministry. “How can we recognize the nationality of one of its nationals one day and no longer recognize it the next day?”, had annoyed a relative of Gérald Darmanin withEuropean 1.
Without a pass, the imam cannot be deported, even if caught by the police, and will be placed in an administrative detention centre. But according to the media, discussions between France and Morocco are still ongoing to negotiate obtaining a new sesame. Essential if the French authorities get their hands on the imam.
When the Ministry of the Interior ordered the imam’s expulsion, Gérald Darmanin explained that the imam had been speaking “to a large audience since the beginning of the 2000s. […]a proselytizing speech interspersed with remarks inciting to hatred and discrimination and carrying a vision of Islam contrary to the values of the Republic”. In addition, Hassan Iquioussen is accused of holding “a speech with an anti-Semitic content particularly virulent”, to advocate the submission of women to men. In addition, the imam, according to the decree, would encourage separatism and display a “contempt for certain republican values such as secularism and democratic functioning of French society”.
The imam has made many controversial remarks in recent years, relayed on online video platforms. As reminded Le Figaro, who has undertaken to list his most controversial statements, Hassan Iquioussen is convinced that Islam in France is in the grip of a “fifth column”, attacked by “traitors of the Interior”, whose objective is to ” to convert, to come out of Islam and to spread information that is false”. And to insist on their place in a statement dating back several years: “They are collaborators. And with us, the collaborators, we put 12 bullets in their heads. The firing squad”. The man also clearly defended several times that Islam was a “religion of peace”, and that “to hate someone because he is Jewish” was “a sin in Islam”. As Le Figaro again points out, the preacher nevertheless described the Jews as “avaricious and usurers”, also designating them as the “top of treason and felony”.
The words of the preacher are also quoted by the Council of State, as it reported in its decision: “The instruction established that Mr. Iquioussen had developed for several years, on the occasion of numerous conferences and speeches relayed by social networks to a wide audience, an anti-Semitic speech for which he presented his “apologies” in 2004 and condemned anti-Semitism in 2015 only in reaction to the emotion that his words had aroused and without refuting In addition, comments of an anti-Semitic nature were reiterated after his ‘apology’ in 2004 and the videos relaying his anti-Semitic comments remained online until recently without Mr. Iquioussen having sought to stop it from being broadcast.”
Imam Hassan Iquioussen was to be at home, at his home in Lourches, near Valenciennes in the North. At least, that’s what the police thought when they went to the address on Tuesday August 30 to arrest the preacher. But there, the man was nowhere to be found. The police continue to search for the imam. “He is obviously in Belgium” announced Gérald Darmanin on CNews, September 1. But in addition to “where?”, the question that arises is how did the imam manage to vanish?
Hassan Iquioussen had been under surveillance by the authorities for several weeks in addition to being on file S for 18 months, but he had no reason to be under a particular surveillance regime having committed neither crime nor offence. If the man is indeed in Belgium, he should have been spotted at the border due to his S file classification. not systematic. In addition, the imam could have been gone for several weeks because he had been notified of his expulsion notice since May 3, before the latter was suspended by the Paris administrative court.
This is what seems to indicate the declarations of one of his five sons, Soufiane, to RMC. The young man explained that his father decided a few weeks ago to “take his distance, to go and rest a little bit” and said that he had not heard from him since. Imam Iquioussen left without his phone found at his address during the police search, an indication which tends to prove that this departure is indeed a leak. The prefect of Hauts-de-France has ruled that Hassan Iquioussen has “become a delinquent” by evading the expulsion order when the man is already considered a fugitive and his name has been added to the file of people wanted.
Criticized, Gérald Darmanin defended himself for having let the 58-year-old preacher escape, said close to the Muslim Brotherhood. “We are not a dictatorship. The law does not allow putting in preventive prisons before someone is condemned. He had never been condemned before. The law does not allow putting very modern techniques geolocation when the person is not wanted, is not a fugitive delinquent. He was when the Council of State said: you can expel him”, had justified the Minister of the Interior .
It should however be noted that the imam received, in mid-August,… a new residence permit! The expulsion decision had indeed been canceled by the administrative court and the Council of State has not yet decided. However, the man never went to the prefecture to retrieve the document, only his wife and his lawyer went there to try to obtain the title, without success.
Thursday August 25, 2022, the investigative newspaper Mediapart revealed that Gérald Darmanin dined with Hassan Iquioussen in 2014. According to the media, the current Minister of the Interior aspired at the time to conquer the town hall of Tourcoing. He then wishes to get closer to those who constitute the left-wing electorate in place at the head of the city and the country (François Hollande was then President of the Republic). It is therefore on this occasion that he organizes a dinner with the representatives of the Muslim community of the North. “We had a very nice evening. It was very positive, we agreed on 99.9% of the topics of conversation,” said Hassan Iquioussen, to Mediapart. For his part, Gérald Darmanin did not wish to react.