Hassan Iquioussen, the imam considered on the run for a month, was arrested in Belgium this Friday, September 30, at 2:15 p.m. According to our information, it was federal police personnel from the Mons-Tournai sector who arrested him, in a house in Mons, on the basis of an investigation by the Zonal Directorate of the Judicial Police (DZPJ) and of the Central Office for Combating Organized Crime. The preacher on file S did not put up the slightest resistance. “This arrest was made under the European arrest warrant issued following the referral to justice by the prefect of the North on the basis of article 40 relating to the avoidance of an expulsion measure. It is up to the Belgian courts to hand over the person concerned to the French authorities in execution of this European arrest warrant, ”says the Ministry of the Interior.
The imam had been on the file of wanted persons in France since August 30. That day, the police came to arrest him to place him in a detention center with a view to his expulsion from French territory, but the 58-year-old imam had hastily left his property in Lourches (North) near Valenciennes before their arrival. .
This departure and the “runaway” of the imam had for several weeks caused controversy in France and some mockery against Gérald Darmanin. It must be said that the Minister of the Interior was on the front line on the file. It was he who issued an expulsion order on July 28 against the imam, of Moroccan nationality, but who has almost always lived in France. The expulsion was motivated by “hateful remarks towards the values of the Republic and contrary to secularism”.
A decision of the Council of State
But this expulsion order was suspended a few days later following an appeal by the imam before the administrative court. It was finally the Council of State, on August 30, which, by reversing the order of the administrative court, had opened the way for the expulsion of Hassan Iquioussen.
The Council of State had justified its decision by arguing that its “anti-Semitic discourse”, “reiterated (…) after its 2004 apologies”, and its “systematic discourse on the inferiority of women”, in “videos always available on the Internet”, did indeed constitute “acts of explicit and deliberate incitement to discrimination or hatred justifying the decision to deport”. In addition, the highest administrative court had considered that “this decision does not (have) a serious and manifestly illegal attack on the private and family life of Mr. Iquioussen”.
An expulsion procedure therefore aborted after the departure of the imam. Since then, the French authorities suspected that Hassan Iquioussen had found refuge on the other side of the border, in Belgium, where for procedural reasons, the local investigators did not have expanded means to track down the imam.
What will happen now? The imam can challenge his return to France by appealing against the arrest warrant, a procedure that can last for weeks. Conversely, if he agrees to be returned to France, “he will be presented immediately to the judge seized of the offense of evading a deportation measure. This magistrate can either instruct or dismiss the case, ”says a judicial source. In case of dismissal, the administrative procedure will continue with the placement of Hassan Iquioussen in an administrative detention center, 90 days maximum, the time to settle the question of the consular pass, adds the same source.
Asked this Friday, one of Hassan Iquioussen’s sons, Othmane Iquioussen, himself an imam in the North, “does not wish to react” to his father’s arrest.