2024-08-29 11:52:31
The Islamic Center Hamburg and its offshoots, which are classified as extremist, are banned. The Blue Mosque has been confiscated. Now the Interior Ministry is taking the next step.
Five weeks after the Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH), which is classified as extremist, was banned, its former director is now to leave Germany. The Hamburg Interior Ministry served 57-year-old Mohammed Hadi Mofatteh with a deportation order this week, said a spokeswoman in Hamburg. She initially did not provide any information on whether the man is still in the country.
The letter asks him to leave Germany within 14 days. Otherwise, he faces deportation to his country of origin – at his own expense. According to the authorities, this must be done by September 11, 2024. In addition, he is not allowed to re-enter Germany or stay here. If he does, he faces up to three years in prison. Radio station NDR 90.3 had previously reported this.
Mohammed Hadi Mofatteh had been head of the IZH since summer 2018. According to the Hamburg State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, he was considered the official representative of the Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Germany until recently.
For Hamburg’s Interior Senator Andy Grote (SPD), the expulsion is the next logical step that the authority is now taking after the ban on the Islamic Center Hamburg, as he said in response to a query. “As the highest religious representative of the inhuman regime in Tehran, his time in Germany has come to an end. We will continue to fight Islamic extremism with all our might and will make full use of all means available under residency law.”
At the end of 2022, the deputy head of the IZH, Sejed Soliman Mussawifar, was expelled from Germany because of his links to the Lebanese Hezbollah militia. He had previously failed in a second instance appeal against the expulsion before the Hamburg Higher Administrative Court. The pro-Iranian terrorist organization has been banned in Germany since 2020.
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) banned the IZH on July 24 as a “significant Iranian propaganda center in Europe.” The reason given in the ban order, that the association and operator of the mosque is controlled by the Iranian government, pursues anti-constitutional goals and spreads the ideology of the Islamic Revolution in Germany, was described by the representatives of the IZH as an “innuendo” that they wanted to counter with the lawsuit.
At the end of July, police across the country confiscated the assets and facilities of the center and five of its affiliated sub-organizations. Since then, the Blue Mosque has also been under federal administration.
For weeks, hundreds of believers have been gathering in front of the closed Blue Mosque on Hamburg’s Outer Alster for Friday prayers and demonstrating for the reopening of the place of worship.