The Chamber of the Council of Tournai refused the execution of the European arrest warrant launched by Paris. The preacher, accused of anti -Semitic remarks, has escaped a French expulsion procedure by joining Belgium, where he was arrested and imprisoned.
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Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, obviously hoped for a rapid decision and in accordance with his wishes: he said, according to him, that Belgian justice is haste to give Hassan Iquious to the French authorities, “in execution of the mandate of ‘European judgment “issued against him. The 58 -year -old Moroccan imam, targeted by an expulsion stop in France, was on the run and was arrested on September 30 in Jemappes, near the city of Mons, Belgium.
An investigating judge of Valenciennes (North) had launched a European mandate against him for “subtraction of the execution of a decision of distance”. Friday, October 21, the Chamber of the Council of Tournai, a body responsible for examining the charges held against an accused, refused the execution of the mandate, giving reason to the person concerned and his lawyers, who disputed the reasons invoked by France .
It seemed very likely, Friday, that the prosecution would appeal the decision before the Chamber of accusation, a chamber of the Court of Appeal. Incarcerated in Tournai prison, Hassan Iquioussen is currently detained and the comments of his Belgian and French lawyers, M e Nicolas Cohen and M e Lucie Simon, were very careful, In the evening: the details of the judgment will not be known before Monday, October 24.
offense “not constituted”
In front of the Council Chamber, which sits behind closed doors, the defenders of the “preacher of the cities”, questioned in France for his “proselyte speech (…) carrying a vision of Islam contrary to the values of The Republic “, have developed purely legal arguments to demonstrate what M e called” the absurdity “of the mandate issued by the French authorities. According to her, her client only respects the law starting from France, a country which intended to force it to leave its territory. The violation which is criticized for it would therefore not be “constituted”.
“The European arrest warrant is a legal procedure, not political, but France has diverted it for political purposes”, said, meanwhile, M e Cohen, also believing that the imam risked an “inequitable” trial in France, given “the extent of the controversy” surrounding his business.
The subtraction of an expulsion measure, punished with a prison sentence in France, is not by European law of foreigners or Belgian law, also pleaded the lawyer. This would therefore make it impossible the principle of automaticity provided for by the rules of the European mandate, designed to accelerate extradition procedures but on the condition that the offenses invoked by the applicant country are also punishable in the other.
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