the expulsion of the imam validated, to where?

HASSAN IQUIOUSSEN. The expulsion of Imam Hassan Iquioussen is legal and justified, declared the Council of State, Tuesday August 30, 2022, validating the decision of Gérald Darmanin.

[Mis à jour le 29 août 2022 à 15h52] It is a thorny file that is closing. The Council of State announced, Tuesday August 30, 2022, to validate the expulsion of Imam Hassan Iquioussen, targeted by an expulsion procedure brought by the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin. 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.

This decision of the Council of State is therefore a green light to the Ministry of the Interior in order to be able to implement the expulsion of Imam Hassan Iquioussen. He should 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 been making hate speech 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 is then launched against Hassan Iquioussen.

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”.

This was also noted by the Conseil d’Etat, as it reported in its decision: “the investigation 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.

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.