Gérald Darmanin announced on Tuesday that Morocco had issued a “consular pass, 24 hours ago”, to “expel manu militari” from France Hassan Iquioussen, an imam reputed to be close to the Muslim Brotherhood and residing in the North.
Responding to a question from RN deputy Sébastien Chenu in the National Assembly, the Minister of the Interior thanked Morocco for issuing this pass, suggesting that the expulsion would be done quickly, as soon as the preacher was arrested. Recalling that he had signed Hassan Iquioussen’s expulsion order, Gérald Darmanin argued that the latter was registered in the “RPF”, the file of wanted persons. “We summoned him to the police station and as soon as the police or the gendarmes have arrested Mr. Iquioussen, he will be expelled from the national territory without the possibility of returning,” he declared.
–
Hassan Iquioussen’s lawyer, Me Lucie Simon, announced on Twitter that she had seized the Paris administrative court “in summary proceedings”. “The right to effective remedy is guaranteed by the Constitution, the expulsion of Mr. Iquioussen cannot take place before an impartial judge rules on its legality”, indicated Me Simon. This appeal “is not suspensive” of the expulsion, “but it is customary to wait for the judge’s decision”, she told AFP, without further details on the location of her customer.
A “manifest error of assessment”
The announcement of the upcoming expulsion, made last Thursday on Twitter by Gérald Darmanin, sparked a series of protests. In a press release, 31 mosques in Hauts-de-France supported the preacher, believing that he was the victim of a “manifest error of assessment”. While attributing to him “a particularly conservative vision of religion” and conceptions that “many find retrograde”, the Hauts-de-France section of the Human Rights League pointed out that the reasons “admitted by the executive date back some twenty years, i.e. a period prior to several renewals of his residence permit”.
“These dubious procedures must challenge all democrats concerned with preserving our rule of law”, estimated for his part the deputy Nupes-LFI of the 8th district of the North, David Guiraud, accusing Gérald Darmanin of wanting “to saturate the airwaves” with “ a security and repressive discourse”.
Anti-Semitic remarks
This preacher is very active on social networks, in particular on his Youtube channel followed by 169,000 people and his facebook page with 42,000 subscribers. Born in France, in Denain, and living near Valenciennes, Hassan Iquioussen, 57, had decided when he came of age, according to Gérald Darmanin, not to choose French nationality. He claims to have given up French nationality at the age of 16 under the influence of his father, and then tried in vain to recover it.
The minister recalled the reasons for his expulsion, namely anti-Semitic remarks, conspiratorial theses and against equality between women and men and for having described as “pseudo attacks” the attacks that occurred in 2015 in France.
–
