The prefecture requests the temporary withdrawal of Imam Ismail
The police prefecture has requested the temporary withdrawal of the imam from the Bleuets mosque in Marseille, under penalty of closure within five days, one of the mosque’s lawyers said on Wednesday, September 5, confirming information from the daily newspaper. The Figaro.
“The mosque representatives received a letter from the prefecture, requesting the temporary withdrawal of Imam Ismaïl, while he follows a training course on “Secularism and Values of the Republic”. And the mosque representatives have five days to respond.”said Rafik Chekkat, one of the lawyers. The police headquarters could not immediately be reached.
A procedure launched by the Ministry of the Interior
On August 20, the police prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône, at the request of Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, notified this mosque in a poor district of the city of his intention to close it by the beginning of September, considering that “words legitimizing violence” have been held there for years.
The main imam of this mosque, the Frenchman Smaïn Bendjilali, called Imam Ismaïl, is notably accused by the police prefecture of “defending a fundamentalist vision legitimizing the use of violence” and about “inciting discrimination against women”which he denies, his defense deploring a political maneuver.
Since then, the mosque’s lawyers and officials met with state representatives on Monday in Marseille. Accompanied by the president of the Departmental Council of the Muslim Faith, they then proposed “corrective measures”indicated Rafik Chekkat, present at the meeting.
This includes removing certain online publications, “not that we consider them illegal but as a measure of appeasement”he said. The imam also proposed to follow a university training on secularism.
Imam Ismail to be tried for “apology for terrorism”
The day after this meeting, Imam Smaïn Bendjilali was taken into custody for several hours on Tuesday, then summoned on October 3 to answer charges “apology for terrorism” linked, according to the Marseille prosecutor’s office, to online publications on the situation in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza.
In August, Imam Ismail defended himself against any anti-Semitism: “When we make an invocation for Gaza, we are accused of being anti-Jewish, but we are not anti-Jewish, we are anti-injustice.”
