The Belgian authorities expelled, on the evening of Friday January 13, the Moroccan imam Hassan Iquioussen, 58, to Casablanca. Arrested on September 30 near the city of Mons, he had since multiplied the procedures to try to avoid this measure, as well as his return to France, where he had been targeted since the end of July by a deportation measure. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, reproached him “a proselytizing speech interspersed with remarks inciting hatred and discrimination, carrying a vision of Islam contrary to the values of the Republic”.
Thursday, January 12, the Consulate General of Morocco in Liège finally issued a pass authorizing the departure of the preacher on file “S”, thus putting an end to the legal headache facing the Belgian authorities.
“The preacher of hate has been fired (…). No place for foreign extremists in our country,” commented, on Twitter, Nicole de Moor, the Belgian Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration. She also thanked the French authorities for their “ good cooperation. The entourage of Mr. Darmanin evoked, Friday evening, ” a great victory against separatism”.
After the arrest of the imam, Belgian justice had rejected the terms of the European arrest warrant issued by Paris. Mr. Iquioussen could not be found in France when the Council of State had definitively validated his expulsion order on August 31. And, at the time, the authorities in Rabat for their part refused to issue the pass which would have allowed them to be deported to Morocco.
Long negotiations
Initially, Mr. Iquioussen had obtained favorable decisions in Belgium, the justice of Tournai, then Mons, acknowledging the illegality of a possible surrender to France since Belgian – and European – law does not provide for criminal sanctions. in the event of “evasion of the execution of a deportation measure », which was the incrimination retained by Paris.
The preacher, however, was later to be placed in a “closed return centre” near Liège, since he did not have the right to reside in Belgium. And he was therefore given an order to leave the territory. At the next stage, his lawyers did not win their case before the Aliens Litigation Council, an appeal body which considered in particular that, if he were to return to France, Mr. Iquioussen would be entitled to a fair trial.
However, the Belgian government understood very quickly that the French authorities did not intend to burden themselves with the imam again and were betting on an expulsion to Morocco decided by Belgium. “France’s objective is for Hassan Iquioussen to remain outside the national territory”, confirmed at the time a government source in Paris.
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