Arrested at midday this Thursday, the imam of Gard Mahjoub Mahjoubi is the subject of an expulsion order. He could very soon be sent back to Tunisia.
Targeted by a request to withdraw his residence permit, imam Mahjoub Mahjoubi was arrested this Thursday, February 22, around 12:30 p.m., at his home in Bagnols-sur-Cèze, in Gard. The man of Tunisian origin must be placed in a detention center in the Paris region, we learned BFMTV with the imam’s relatives. At the time of his arrest, Mahjoub Mahjoubi, “in shock”, again according to his entourage, read the expulsion order signed by the Minister of the Interior. If the procedure has been initiated, to be able to expel the man and send him back to Tunisia, the authorities must wait to receive a consular permit from the Tunisian administration.
In detail, the expulsion order indicates that the imam is accused of having “conveyed a literal, retrograde, intolerant and violent conception of Islam, likely to encourage behavior contrary to the values of the Republic, discrimination against women, withdrawal into identity, tensions with the Jewish community and jihadist radicalization”, relays Le Figaro who was able to consult it. Still according to the decree, Mahjoub Mahjoubi repeatedly presented women “as being inferior, weak and venal”, claiming that they should be “controlled by men” and could “be sequestered in the name of religion”. Among the other criticisms made against him, we also note “hateful and discriminatory” comments that he allegedly made when referring to “non-Muslims” or even “French society”.
An appeal filed by the imam and his defense
The imam and his defense, lawyer Samir Hamroun, intended to file an appeal before the Paris administrative court in the evening, Thursday, to “contest this expulsion procedure”. But “it will not be suspensive. Everything now depends on Tunisia and the consular pass”, informed Free lunch Me Hamroun, the imam’s lawyer, specifying that “the expulsion can occur at any time”.
Concretely, the summary expulsion procedure used by the lawyer does not have a suspensive effect on the minister’s decision and does not prevent the expulsion immediately. But in practice, Me Hamroun reminded BFMTV that the administrative authority generally awaits the court’s decision before applying penalties, particularly those of expulsion.
With this appeal, the imam and his lawyer hope to prove that there is no urgency to expel Mahjoub Mahjoubi from French territory to give him the opportunity to express himself on this matter. “We are witnessing an unprecedented violation of fundamental rights and public freedoms,” Mr. Hamroun underlined to BFMTV, stressing that Mahjoub Mahjoubi was not the subject of any summons to be able to explain the controversy surrounding him after the broadcast of a video of one of his sermons.
Near Free lunch, the advisor also returned to the arrest of the imam this Thursday. “We didn’t expect it. I thought he would be taken into custody as part of the investigation for advocating terrorism,” he confided. And to affirm: “This is the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic that a foreigner has been the subject of an extradition procedure so quickly.”
A preliminary investigation for condoning terrorism
The affair surrounding Mahjoub Mahjoubi began on February 18 with the broadcast of a video of the imam giving a sermon in which he evokes “tricolor flags which gangrene us” subsequently described as “Satanist” standards “. It is never specified whether the French flag is in question and the imam assures in his defense that no, that he made a slip of the tongue between “tricolor” and “multicolor” when wanting to talk about African flags.
The Minister of the Interior immediately reacted by requesting the withdrawal of the imam’s residence permit, an initiative justified not only by the videos of the sermon, but by the remarks made by Mahjoub Mahjoub during previous sermons according to the prefect of Gard, Jérôme Bonet. The prefect who had reported the imam to the public prosecutor of Gars, believes that the remarks in question “call into question the principles of the Republic”. After the reports, a preliminary investigation into advocating terrorism was opened. Minister Gérald Darmanin, for his part, assured that “no call to hatred will go unanswered”.