The 58 -year -old preacher, first targeted by an expulsion measure in France due to a “speech encouraging hatred and discrimination”, had fled to Belgium, where he had been arrested. His country of origin finally agreed to deliver a pass.
by Jean-Pierre Stroobants (Brussels, correspondent)
The Belgian authorities expelled, in the evening of Friday, January 13, the Moroccan imam Hassan Iquioussen, 58, to Casablanca. Arrested on September 30 near the city of Mons, he had since multiplied the procedures to try to avoid this measure, as well as his return to France, where he was targeted since the end of July by an expulsion measure. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, reproached him “a proselyte speech enamelled with words encouraging hatred and discrimination, carrying a vision of Islam contrary to the values of the Republic”.
Thursday, January 12, the Consulate General of Morocco in Liège finally delivered a pass authorizing the departure of the “S” preacher, thus making it possible to put an end to the legal puzzle with which the Belgian authorities were confronted. p>
“The preacher of hatred has been sent back (…). No room for foreign extremists in our country,” commented, on Twitter, Nicole de Moor, the Belgian Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration . She also thanked the French authorities for their “good cooperation”. The entourage of Mr. Darmanin evoked, on Friday evening, “a great victory against separatism”.
After the Imam’s arrest, Belgian justice had rejected the terms of the European arrest warrant launched by Paris. Mr. Iquioussen was not found in France when the Council of State had definitively validated his expulsion decree on August 31. And, at the time, the authorities of Rabat refused on their side to deliver the pass which would have allowed a distance to Morocco.
long negotiations
At first, Mr. Iquioussen had obtained favorable decisions in Belgium, the justice of Tournai, then Mons, acting the illegality of a possible discount to France since Belgian – and European law does not provide criminal penalty in the event of “subtraction to the execution of a distance of distance”, which was the incrimination chosen by Paris.
The preacher would however be placed in a “closed return center” near Liège, since he did not have the right to stay in Belgium. And he therefore saw himself signifying an order to leave the territory. At the next stage, his lawyers did not get a success before the Conseil des littieux des Foreigners, an authority for appeal which considered in particular that, if he were to return to France, Mr. Iquioussen would have the right to a fair trial.
The Belgian government, however, quickly understood that the French authorities did not intend to get fucked again from the imam and bet on an expulsion to Morocco decided by Belgium. “The objective of France is that Hassan Iquioussen remains outside the national territory,” confirmed at the time a government source in Paris.
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