justice examines the request for annulment
Four days after the widely commented expulsion of imam Mahjoub Mahjoubi in Tunisia, the Paris administrative court must examine on Monday February 26 the case of another preacher who hit the headlines: imam Hassan Iquioussen who, in 2022 , after an expulsion order signed Gérald Darmanin, had taken the path to Belgium before being sent to Morocco. It is on the merits that the court will rule this Monday while as part of an emergency procedure, this same administrative body suspended, in August 2022, the expulsion ordered by the Minister of the Interior.
“A speech with particularly virulent anti-Semitic content”
A Moroccan national with S registration, imam Iquioussen has 5 children and 15 French grandchildren. His ministerial expulsion order, signed at the beginning of August 2022, reported a “a proselytizing speech (…) bearer of a vision of Islam contrary to the values of the French Republic”, “a speech with particularly virulent anti-Semitic content”advocating the “submission of women for the benefit of men”encouraging the “separatism” and the ” contempt “ of secularism.
The imam’s lawyer, Me Lucie Simon, had filed a summary judgment with the administrative court which had suspended the expulsion order in August 2022. The court then considered that the imam’s remarks according to which a man should not letting his wife leave the home alone constituted good “acts of provocation (…) to discrimination against women”. But this single reason “cannot (can) justify the expulsion order without seriously and manifestly disproportionately affecting his right to lead a normal private and family life”, the judgment had clarified. Faced with this snub, the Ministry of the Interior appealed the decision to the Council of State which, at the end of August 2022, won its case by overturning the decision of the administrative court
THE “anti-Semitic remarks made for several years, during numerous widely disseminated conferences, as well as his speech on the inferiority of women and their submission to men constitute acts of explicit and deliberate provocation to discrimination or hatred justifying the expulsion decision”, had underlined the Council of State. The court also took into account the fact that Hassan Iquioussen’s children were adults and no longer dependent on their father. She stressed that her wife, herself of Moroccan nationality, was not unable to join her husband in Morocco. Consequently, the judge of the Council of State considered that the expulsion decision did not appear “manifestly disproportionate” and did not wear a “serious and manifestly illegal infringement” to the private and family life of the imam.
An expulsion to Morocco in early 2023
At that time, the Ministry of the Interior hoped to expel Hassan Iquioussen but he preferred to go to Belgium. A strategy that initially paid off, as the local justice system refused to send him back to France. But as Hassan Iquioussen did not have the right of residence in Belgium, he ended up being deported by the country’s authorities to Morocco in January 2023.
This Monday, the Paris administrative court will therefore look again at the situation of Hassan Iquioussen who asked to be heard by video from Morocco. This hearing comes as the imam of Bagnols-sur-Cèze (Gard), Mahjoub Mahjoubi, has just been the subject of a ministerial expulsion order. But an important difference exists between the two cases. In 2022, imam Iquioussen was able, after signing his expulsion order, to benefit from at least one month to defend his situation before the administrative court and then the Council of State. While Mahjoub Mahjoubi was arrested on Thursday February 22 and deported to Tunisia a few hours later, without being heard.
In the case of Imam Iquioussen, the ministry had to ask the Moroccan authorities to issue a consular pass while, for Imam Mahjoubi, a visit to his home made it possible to get hold of his documents. identity document, proving his Tunisian nationality. This allowed the police to quickly put him on the plane, heading to Tunisia. Mahjoub Mahjoubi’s defense should now seize the administrative court to try to have an expulsion already in effect annulled.
