A hearing on the merits was held Monday before the Paris administrative court concerning the expulsion order of Moroccan imam Hassan Iquioussen, whom Gérald Darmanin had made in 2022 a symbol of the government's fight against
“separatist speeches”
.
The decision will be rendered on March 11 after the hearing which took place four days after the expulsion to Tunisia of imam Mahjoub Mahjoubi.
At the end of July 2022, the Minister of the Interior announced the expulsion of Hassan Iquioussen, a preacher from the North listed as S (for state security) by the intelligence services.
The decree signed by the minister accuses him of
“a proselytizing speech peppered with remarks inciting hatred and discrimination and carrying a vision of Islam contrary to the values of the Republic”
.
But the imam was nowhere to be found when the expulsion order was validated by the Council of State on August 31, 2022. He had fled to Belgium, where he will be arrested and then deported to Morocco in January 2023. Monday, the administrative court, which had urgently suspended the expulsion at the beginning of August 2022, studied the case on the merits, an appeal in excess of its powers in which the 59-year-old applicant requests in particular a residence permit.
It was questioned during the hearing whether or not the comments and videos of Hassan Iquioussen, between 2003 and 2019, harmed state security.
Freedom of opinion and not provocation
According to the conclusions read by the public rapporteur, the expulsion order is justified by the reiteration over several years of a
“systematic”
,
“without nuance”
and anti-Semitic discourse.
These comments are
“likely to provoke violence”
or sound like
“calls for hatred and discrimination”
, particularly against women.
“The idea of war between Muslims and non-Muslims is very significant”
in the imam's remarks, argues the Ministry of the Interior, and the imam's speeches of
“victimization of the Muslim population”
can give rise to of
“distrust”
.
It is a question of freedom of opinion and not of provocation, argues Hassan Iquioussen's lawyer, Me Lucie Simon, regretting that the ministry relies on
"truncated quotes"
.
“The disputed facts are older than five years
,” she notes.
“There is no longer any current threat”
.
“The problem is Hassan Iquioussen's speech and his videos, yet he was never given any warning to stop,”
according to the lawyer, assuring that her client was
“prepared to never give a conference again
. ”
Born in France, Hassan Iquioussen decided when he came of age not to opt for French nationality.
He claims to have given it up at age 17 under the influence of his father and then tried in vain to obtain it.
His five children and 18 grandchildren are French and based in the Nord department.
If the administrative court did not annul the order, Hassan Iquioussen could still seize the administrative court of appeal of Paris, then the Council of State, and as a last resort the European Court of Human Rights, recalls Me Simon .