Hassan Iquioussen Returns Home

I’ve reported previously on the case of Hassan Iquioussen, a “French” imam who fled the country to avoid deportation. He had been condemned for his publicly-expressed Jew-hatred, among other things. After the deportation order against him was issued, he went on the lam, and was eventually discovered and arrested in Belgium.

Imam Iquioussen was born in France, but renounced his French citizenship when he reached his majority, and is a Moroccan national. Now he has finally been deported from Belgium to Morocco.

Many thanks to Gary Fouse for translating this article from BFM TV:

Imam Hassan Iquioussen has been expelled to Morocco by Belgium

January 13, 2023

At the end of last July, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, announced his expulsion from French territory. But the imam could not be found at the time the expulsion arrest was ordered, and had fled to Belgium.

Imam Hassan Iquioussen was expelled on Friday to Morocco by Belgium, where he had been arrested on September 30 after the expulsion order from France for “remarks inciting hate and discrimination,” his French lawyer announced.

The preacher from the north of France, for whom Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin had announced an expulsion order at the end of July, was expelled to Casablanca after the issuance of an entry permit by Moroccan authorities, stated the attorney Lucie Simon.

The expulsion order forbids return, the Interior Ministry tells BFM TV. Hassan Iquioussen is listed in the file of wanted persons, and therefore in the Schengen information system, which permits the reporting and prevents his entry into European (EU) territory.

A “great victory against separatism”

The announcement was also made by the Belgian Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration on her Twitter account Friday, hailing the removal of the “Iquioussen hate,” and “the good cooperation” with France in this case.

“We cannot permit an extremist to wander around our territory. Everyone who hasn’t the right to be here must be removed,” she commented in a press release.

For his part, Gerald Darmanin welcomed a “great victory against separatism,” BFM TV learned from his entourage.

Expulsion from France in July

At the end of July, Gerald Darmanin announced the expulsion of Hassan Iquioussen, accusing him of making “a proselytizing speech mixed with remarks inciting hate and discrimination and carrying a vision of Islam contrary to the values of the French Republic.”

But the imam could not be located at the time the arrest warrant for deportation had been definitively validated by the Counsel of State on August 31. He had fled to French-speaking Belgium where he was arrested in the area of Mons on September 30.

Hassan Iquioussen was then placed in a lockdown center near Liege in mid-November on charges of illegal residence and targeted with an order to leave Belgian territory after the failure of a European arrest procedure initiated by France.

“About-face”

His French attorney, Lucie Simon, was shocked Friday evening by the “about-face” by Morocco, which had refused France’s request last summer to issue a consular entry pass allowing the removal of the imam to his country of origin.

“I am surprised by the about-face by the Moroccan authorities, and I believe that the place for Hassan Iquioussen is in France,” the attorney Lucie Simon reacted, stressing that the lawyers were not informed of the issuance of the consular document.

“We await the basis of the judgment of the Paris Administrative Tribunal, and if the French expulsion order had been annulled, France would have had to ensure his return,” she added.