Paris has been asking for, since this summer, the extradition of this preacher, who has exiled to Belgium after the issue of an expulsion decree against him.
Le Monde
The Mons Court of Appeal, in Belgium, confirmed Tuesday the refusal to extradite the Moroccan Imam Hassan Iquioussen, claimed by French justice for having subtracted at the end of the summer from a decree of ‘expulsion. At first instance, the decision was rendered on October 21 by the Tournai court.
“The Court considers that the facts at the base of the European arrest warrant (MAE) awarded on August 31, 2022 are not constitutive of an offense in Belgian law,” said François Demoulin, substitute for the Attorney General. “Consequently, the European arrest warrant is not executed, as the court had already decided,” he added.
“This is a victory for the law”, reacted Lucie Simon and Nicolas Cohen, the lawyers of the Imam. On appeal as at first instance, the Belgian prosecutor’s office said he was favorable to the delivery to France and the judgment rendered on Tuesday is likely to be disputed before the Court of Cassation. The Mons’s General Prosecutor’s Office did not speak on a possible appeal.
Hassan Iquioussen, arrested on September 30 in the Mons region, in French-speaking Belgium, and now under house arrest under electronic surveillance, was at the heart of a politico-judicial imbroglio this summer in France. At the end of July, the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced the expulsion of this preacher, died (for state security) by the intelligence services. The decree criticizes him “a proselyte speech enamelled with words encouraging hatred and discrimination and carrying a vision of Islam contrary to the values of the Republic”. But Mr. Iquioussen was not found at the time of this decree, which he had challenged before the courts, had been definitively validated by the Council of State, on August 31.
According to M e Lucie Simon, her client “respected French law purely and simply by leaving France for Wallonia”. A closed audience was held last Thursday in front of the House of accusation of the Mons Court of Appeal, during which the Imam and his lawyers had repeated their arguments. According to them, the offense criticized in France (“subtraction of the execution of a distance of distance”) “does not exist in Belgian law”, which is supposed to be the case for a MAE to be executed.
In addition, a European arrest warrant is only valid “when a prison sentence is incurred,” added Belgian lawyer Nicolas Cohen. However, “in European law, it is prohibited to provide a prison sentence for behavior linked to an illegal stay or a refusal of expulsion,” he continued, citing case law of the Court of Justice EU.