He was definitively sentenced for provoking hatred and violence against the Jewish community in December. An imam of Algerian nationality, Mohamed Tataïat, who officiated in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne), was deported Friday evening to Algeria, announced Gérald Darmanin.
In a message
posted
on
imam
of Toulouse, preacher of hatred and condemned by the courts.”
Mohamed Tataïat arrived in France in 1985 as a seconded Algerian imam. He moved to Toulouse two years later to work in the mosque in the Empalot district. He is the father of four children, according to La Dépêche du Midi.
Access to French nationality had been refused to him twice, in 2002, then in 2007. The State services had motivated their decision by "the absence of an integration effort, characterized by his insufficient mastery of the French language, all of his sermons being delivered in Arabic,” specifies the Ministry of the Interior.
Anti-Semitic comments reported in 2018
In June 2018, the prefect of Haute-Garonne reported comments made during a sermon on December 15, 2017 at the En Nour mosque, characterizing, according to the prefect, "a provocation to hatred and discrimination against Jews ". Several associations fighting against racism and anti-Semitism had also filed complaints.
On August 31, 2022, he was sentenced by the Toulouse Court of Appeal to 4 months in prison for this preaching. The words “urging hatred or violence against a group of people, all Jews” had been made by “a cultured and experienced man who prepared his speech himself”, indicates the Ministry of the Interior. The Court found “that he knew the meaning of the words he used and their scope, through his training and his level of knowledge”.
On December 19, 2023, the Court of Cassation rejected Mohamed Tataïat's appeal, thus making his conviction final.
On April 5, Gérald Darmanin signed his expulsion order. He was arrested at his home this Friday with authorization from the judge of freedoms and detention and immediately expelled.
“A manu militari expulsion” according to his lawyer
“There was no emergency, he has been on French territory for 40 years, he has children, he works, he has not been talked about for seven years, and there he finds himself on a plane towards Algeria,” reacted to AFP one of his lawyers, Jean Iglesis, denouncing a “manu militari expulsion to avoid having the (
expulsion
) order suspended.”
A hearing to examine a request for interim relief from the imam's lawyers against this expulsion order is scheduled for Monday at the Paris administrative court, added Me Iglesis.
“What is happening is of a certain seriousness (…). It is a distrust of the defense and the judicial authority,” continued the imam’s counsel, affirming in particular that he had not been able to have access to his client when he was pending. expulsion at Toulouse airport. He further assured that Mohamed Tataïat had not received an expulsion notice.