INFO EUROPE 1 – Between Dubai, Marrakech and Bamako, the backyard of radical imams to circumvent the French law on separatism

He had already tried to get his hands on mosques in the Ile-de-France region at the end of the 2010s, under the pretext that they did not respect prayer times. This 47-year-old Frenchman, born in Syria, is an old figure of fundamentalist Islam in the Paris region, best known for his obscure relationships with Saudi sheikhs.

The law on separatism now prevents it, given its pedigree, from financing and developing structures on French territory. But from Dubai, where he now resides, he gives lessons in French every Saturday for students of religious sciences. After the October 7 attacks, he condemned “Israeli abuses in Gaza” and compared the Muslim community to a disease “in a lethargic state”, reproaching the faithful for not “intervening to stop these actions”.

Double the reception capacity in Bamako

According to information from Europe 1, this rigorous imam is behind the vast expansion project of the “Sounnah Institute” in Bamako in Mali, a teaching center which mainly provides online courses. The structure’s capacity today is around twenty children and around sixty adults.

The ambition of the French imam is to double or even triple this reception capacity. At the end of December, the association managed to raise enough funds to purchase the land. From now on, the project is to erect a attached mosque of 800 m². And to place half a dozen French people at its head, most of them radicalized imams who since the law against separatism no longer have any right to participate in the legal structures of Ile-de-France.

Recruitment channel between Bamako and Paris

Most of them are registered in the radicalized file, the FSPRT, and meet regularly, according to information from Europe 1, in Marrakech in Morocco, from where they refine their plans to settle in Bamako. Some go back and forth to the Paris region to find new recruits, mainly from the Malian community, and send them to Bamako to be taught radical Islam.

For now, this little scheme is well known to internal and external intelligence services who are closely following the rise of this Malian sector. But at this stage, no legal proceedings could be initiated, relations between France and Mali have been non-existent since the installation of the junta in power. No diplomacy, no judicial cooperation. It also illustrates that radical Islam is developing in the Malian capital with the knowledge of putschist Colonel Assimi Goïta, who last summer released two figures from the subsidiary of the Islamic State in the Sahel.