Paris (AFP) - A Paris administrative court on Monday upheld a decision to deport French-born Moroccan imam Hassan Iquioussen. Sent back to Morocco in 2023 after being accused of hate speech, Iquioussen says he will appeal the verdict.
The court "rejects Mr. Iquioussen's request for the annulment of the expulsion decision taken by the Minister of the Interior on July 29, 2022".
In a statement, the court said that the imam had "committed repeated acts of explicit and deliberate provocation to discrimination, hatred or violence against Jews, women and non-Muslims."
Iquioussen's lawyer Lucie Simon said the court decision did not take into account any of her client's arguments, nor the context, "retaining comments more than ten to twenty years old."
Eighteen months prior to his deportation, Iquioussen had been flagged by French intelligence as a "fiche S" – the classification used to monitor individuals who are considered a threat to national security.
He was also the subject of a European arrest warrant. Iquioussen initially fled to Belgium before being expelled in January 2023 to Morocco.
He stood accused of "a proselytising speech interspersed with remarks inciting hatred and discrimination and carrying a vision of Islam contrary to the values of republic", according to the expulsion document.
Deportation 'justified'
On 26 February, France's top administrative court examined an appeal for "excess of power" against the expulsion order in which the 59-year-old applicant is seeking a residence permit.
At the hearing, the issue was whether or not Iquioussen's comments and videos between 2003 and 2019 constituted a threat to state security.
According to the conclusions read out by the public prosecutor, the expulsion order was justified by the repetition over several years of "systematic", "unqualified" and anti-Semitic discourse.
These comments were "likely to provoke violence" or sounded like "calls for hatred and discrimination", particularly against women.
"The idea of war between Muslims and non-Muslims is very prevalent" in the imam's remarks, the Interior Ministry argued.
'Freedom of opinion'
Iquioussen's lawyer, Lucie Simon, argued that this was a matter of freedom of opinion, not provocation, adding the ministry relied on "truncated quotes".
"The facts in dispute date back more than five years," Simon said. "There is no longer any current threat." Born in France, Iquioussen decided when he came of age not to opt for French nationality.
Iquioussen has five children and 15 grandchildren, all French. Iquioussen can still appeal to the Paris administrative court of appeal, then to the State Council, and as a last resort to the European Court of Human Rights.