the closure of a Muslim college in Nice suspended
The Nice administrative court, seized in summary proceedings, suspended on Friday April 19 the execution of the order closing the Avicenne Muslim college, accused of “opaque financing”.
In a statement accompanying its order, the court explained that the “errors and inaccuracies” recorded in the accounts of this private college outside the contract were not “not likely to justify the permanent closure of the establishment”which accommodates around a hundred students.
Suspicions of “opaque financing”
On March 14, the prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes Hugues Moutouh ordered the closure at the end of the school year of this college opened in 2015, without calling into question the quality of teaching but denouncing “opaque financing and obvious financial irregularities”.
In accordance with the 2021 law against separatism, the college must inform the administration of the origin of its funding. But after months of fruitless exchanges with the prefecture, the contribution tables presented at the beginning of March were still too imprecise for the prefecture.
During the hearing on Tuesday, in the presence of dozens of students and parents, the Avicenne association, an emanation of the Union of Muslims of the Alpes-Maritimes (Umam) and manager of the college, recognized ” errors “ in his accounts but denounced “a relentlessness”.
The association's lawyer, Me Sefen Guez Guez, also mentioned a decision “disproportionate and unfair”especially since the college is located in a disadvantaged area of Nice and its closure risked sending most of the students back to the neighboring public college, already saturated.
