Hostile ideology, anti-Semitic and hateful publications… the imam of Pessac arrested with a view to his expulsion

En 2022, des publications avaient déjà conduit à une fermeture de la mosquée de Pessac Capture d'écran Youtube

Le ministère de l’Intérieur a ordonné l’expulsion de l’imam de Pessac, Abdouramane Ridouane, de nationalité nigérienne, ce jeudi 8 août, malgré une décision de justice visant à régulariser son titre de séjour.

The president of the Pessac mosque in southeastern France, a Nigerien national, was arrested this Thursday morning, August 8, as part of an expulsion procedure, a few days after a court decision that nevertheless opened the way to his regularization.

Abdourahmane Ridouane, who heads the Al Farouk mosque in Pessac, located in the suburbs of Bordeaux and considered to be “of"Salafist obedience" by the authorities, was arrested at his home around 6:30 a.m. this Thursday, August 8, said to AFP his lawyer Me Sefen Guez Guez.

The Nigerian passport of the fifty-year-old was not found by the police who searched the imam's home as well as the mosque, added his counsel. The operation took place within the framework of a ministerial expulsion order published Monday, August 5, confirmed a source close to the case.

“Publications with anti-Semitic and hateful content”

According to the order consulted by AFP, the Interior Ministry accuses Mr. Ridouane, already under house arrest during the Olympic Games, of disseminating on social networks "an ideology hostile to the values ​​and institutions of the French Republic".

The authorities also accuse him "of publications of an anti-Semitic and hateful nature against Israel and Jews", notably by relaying, four days after the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, a press cartoon presenting the Palestinian Islamist organization as a “self-defense” movement and “clearing this organization of the terrorist dimension of its action”.

Last week, the Bordeaux administrative court ordered the authorities to “re-examine” Mr. Ridouane's application for renewal of his residence permit, which had remained unanswered, and to issue him a “receipt” provisional authorizing him to work in France, according to the decision consulted by AFP.

The Pessac mosque already closed in 2022

In June, an expulsion commission of the judicial court had, for its part, given an unfavorable advisory opinion concerning his possible deportation. For Me Guez Guez, this "new procedure ignores the opinion of the judicial court and the decision of the administrative court of Bordeaux".

"The State is organizing itself so that the operation is carried out at such a rapid pace that the court cannot intervene, it is scandalous", added the lawyer, who intends to file an appeal "urgently".

In 2022, publications on Social networks had already led to an administrative closure of the Pessac mosque, finally annulled by the administrative court of Bordeaux and then the Council of State, the supreme administrative judge in France.