Gérald Darmanin announced the expulsion to Algeria of Toulouse imam Mohammed Tataïat. He was sentenced in 2022 to four months’ suspended imprisonment for provoking hatred and violence against the Jewish community.
An imam of Algerian nationality, Mohamed Tataïat, who officiated in Toulouse, was expelled on Friday April 19 to Algeria, announced Gérald Darmanin. In a message posted on hatred and condemned by the courts.
Arriving in France in 1985, Mohamed Tataïat moved to Toulouse a few years later to work in the mosque in the Empalot district. Access to French nationality had been refused twice, in 2002, then in 2007, according to La Dépêche du Midi. The State services had motivated their decision by “the absence of an integration effort, characterized by his insufficient mastery of the French language, all of his sermons being delivered in Arabic”, specifies the Ministry of Interior.
A conviction in 2022
Remarks made during a sermon on December 15, 2017 at the En Nour mosque were reported in June 2018 by the prefect of Haute-Garonne who spoke of “a provocation to hatred and discrimination against Jews”. The imam was sentenced by the Toulouse Court of Appeal to 4 months in prison for this preaching, in August 2022. The Court had notably considered “that he knew the meaning of the words he used and their scope, by his training and his level of knowledge”. The person concerned, for his part, defended himself from any anti-Semitism. The man of faith apologized “deeply to his friends in the Jewish community of Toulouse and France”, and pointed out a “decontextualized interpretation” of his words.
On April 5, Gérald Darmanin signed his expulsion order. He was arrested at his home on Friday and was subsequently deported. His lawyers denounce a hasty decision against this father of 6 children. “There was no emergency, he has been on French territory for 40 years, he has children, he works, he has not been talked about for seven years, and there he finds himself on a plane towards Algeria”, reacted to AFP Me Jean Iglesis. For him, it is a “manu militari expulsion to avoid having the order suspended”.