Belgian justice has decided to release Imam Iquioussen, claimed by the French authorities. He was placed under electronic surveillance.
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© FRANCOIS LO PRESTI / AFP
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UA Belgian judge has decided to release the Moroccan imam Hassan Iquioussen, whom French justice has been demanding since he escaped an expulsion order and was arrested in Belgium a month ago. The man has indeed obtained Thursday, October 27 his release with placement under electronic surveillance. Joined by Agence France-Presse (AFP) the prosecutor’s office in Tournai, in western Belgium, confirmed this information revealed by the French channel BFMTV.
The imam, who disputes his surrender to France under a European arrest warrant (MAE), should soon leave the Belgian prison where he is imprisoned, according to the same source.
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The placement under an electronic bracelet, decided Thursday morning by an investigating judge from Tournai, requires him to reside in “a specific place, determined by the order” of release, said a spokesman for the prosecution. According to BFMTV, the 58-year-old imam should stay with a friend. “The detention under bracelet was granted”, simply said for his part the Belgian lawyer of the suspect, Me Nicholas Cohen.
A “proselytizing discourse” inciting “hate and discrimination”
Hassan Iquioussen, arrested on September 30 in the Mons region, in French-speaking Belgium, was at the heart of a political and legal soap opera this summer in France. At the end of July, the French Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin announced the expulsion of this preacher from the North, on file S (for state security) by the intelligence services. The decree accuses him of “proselytizing speech interspersed with remarks inciting hatred and discrimination and carrying a vision of Islam contrary to the values of the Republic”. But Hassan Iquioussen could not be found when this decree, which he had challenged in court, had been definitively validated by the Council of State on August 31.
According to his French lawyer, Me Lucie Simon, her client, “purely and simply respected French law by leaving France for Wallonia”.
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The imam’s defense contests the alleged offense of “evading the execution of a deportation measure” and ensures that it has no equivalent in Belgian law, which is one of the conditions of the execution of the arrest warrant.
The chamber of the council of the court of Tournai went in the same direction on October 21 and refused the extradition. After the appeal of the prosecution, in favor of the surrender, the file must return in the coming days to the Mons Court of Appeal.