Imam Hassan Iquioussen: the man is the subject of a European arrest warrant

IQUIOUSSEN. Imam Hassan Iquioussen is the subject of a European arrest warrant, Thursday September 1, 2022. The man, whose expulsion from France was confirmed by the Council of State on August 30, cannot be found.

[Mis à jour le 1er septembre 2022 à 20h27] A European arrest warrant was issued against Hassan Iquioussen on Thursday September 1, 2022, according to information from BFM-TV. The imam is considered on the run since police went to his home in Lourches, near Valenciennes, Tuesday August 30, 2022. Indeed, Hassan Iquioussen is subject to a deportation decision to Morocco, which has been declared valid by the Council of State. This arrest warrant comes as the Interior Ministry is still looking for the imam. Wednesday August 31, Gérald Darmanin indicated on the set of “C to you”, on France 5, “He is obviously in Belgium”. He then added that he was going to send the necessary information on Hassan Iquioussen to the Belgian Minister of the Interior.

The flight of the imam and this European arrest warrant are additional twists in this hot file of the summer. The expulsion of Hassan Iquioussen was first decided at the end of July by the Ministry of the Interior. It had been challenged by the administrative court of Paris, before being brought before the Council of State, which finally validated the decision of Gérald Darmanin. However, the French administration did not deport Hassan Iquioussen to Morocco, since the imam fled before the decision was implemented.

However, Gérald Darmanin defended himself from having let the 58-year-old preacher escape, said close to the Muslim Brotherhood: “We are not a dictatorship. The law does not allow to put in preventive prisons before someone is convicted. He had never been convicted before. The law does not allow very modern techniques of geolocation to be put in when the person is not wanted, is not a fugitive delinquent. He has it was when the Council of State said: you can expel him.” He would therefore have finally left the territory by his own means. Which would ultimately not displease Gérald Darmanin, Morocco having prevented France from sending him this preacher of Moroccan nationality (read below).

Imam Hassan Iquioussen was to be at home, at his home in Lourches, near Valenciennes in the North. At least, that’s what law enforcement thought when they went to the address on Tuesday evening to arrest the preacher. But there, the man was nowhere to be found. The police continue to search for the imam who therefore appears to be in Belgium. 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.

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.

The decision of the Council of State was therefore a green light to the Ministry of the Interior in order to be able to implement the expulsion of Imam Hassan Iquioussen. He was to be deported to Morocco, after a legal battle lasting several weeks. It all started when Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, announced on July 28, 2022, on Twitter: “This preacher has for years held a hate speech against the values ​​​​of France, contrary to our principles of secularism and of 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 (read below), 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 leave – 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 Le Figaro reminds us, 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.”

A week after Gérald Darmanin’s initial tweet, on Friday August 5, 2022, the Paris administrative court suspended the deportation to Morocco of Hassan Iquioussen. The court recognized “retrograde remarks” on the place of women in society, but assured that their expulsion is not justified.

Following this decision, Gérald Darmanin appealed to the Council of State. Thursday, August 4, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) had rejected a request for suspension of this expulsion measure. The Minister of the Interior, who revealed on August 8 that Hassan Iquioussen had been on file S for eighteen months, intended to follow through on his approach. According to statements reported by Franceinfo, he was “prepared to go as far as legislative changes if the law is not in tune with the nature of the threat posed by delinquent foreigners”.

Thus, the Council of State was seized by the Minister of the Interior on the legitimacy of the suspension of the request for expulsion of the imam. The court considered that it was not legitimate and therefore ordered the expulsion of Imam Iquioussen. The Council of State thus announced, Tuesday August 30, 2022, to validate the expulsion of Imam Hassan Iquioussen. If his decision had been canceled by the administrative court of Paris, the highest administrative court of France finally agreed with the minister, giving the green light to the competent authorities to get the preacher out of France. For Gérald Darmanin, this is a “great victory for the Republic”, as he commented on the announcement on social networks, recalling having justified his decision because of “anti-Semitic remarks and contrary to equality between women and men” held by Imam Iquioussen.

This is what also prompted the Council of State to go in the direction of the tenant of Place Beauvau. The statement from the court indicates that “the interim judge of the Council of State considers that his anti-Semitic remarks, made for several years at numerous widely publicized conferences, as well as his speech on the inferiority of women and their submission to man constitute acts of explicit and deliberate provocation to discrimination or hatred justifying the decision of expulsion.” Moreover, “this decision does not seriously and manifestly illegally affect the private and family life of Mr. Iquioussen”, added the Council of State. For now, neither the imam nor his council has reacted to the decision.

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.