Abdourahmane Ridouane, imam of the Al Farouk mosque in Bordeaux, was arrested on August 8 for disseminating “an ideology hostile to the values and institutions of the French Republic.”
On Tuesday, September 17, the Council of State rejected the appeal of the Nigerian imam of the Pessac mosque (Gironde), considered by the authorities to be of “Salafist obedience” and arrested with a view to an expulsion that he is seeking to prevent.
As in the first instance before the Paris administrative court, the interim relief judge considered that the expulsion order issued by the Ministry of the Interior against him was well-founded and did not constitute a “disproportionate and illegal” infringement of his rights and freedoms.
Abdourahmane Ridouane, 59, who runs the Al Farouk mosque in the Bordeaux metropolitan area and “has resided regularly in France for more than twenty years”, as the judge recalled, was arrested at his home on August 8 and his residence permit was withdrawn.
“Hatred towards Western countries”
The authorities accuse the imam, who is under house arrest during the Olympic Games, of comments or positions – made or relayed on social networks – accusing France of practicing “state Islamophobia”.
He also allegedly “justified terrorist acts” and “provoked discrimination or hatred towards Western countries, the State of Israel and all people of the Jewish religion”, the Council of State noted in its order.
He specifies that Abdourahmane Ridouane broadcast messages “legitimizing” the attack carried out on October 7, 2023 by Hamas against Israel and saluted the memory of its former leader, Ismaïl Haniyeh, after his assassination on July 31 in Tehran.
Thus, the interim relief judge concluded, “Mr Ridouane must be regarded as not having limited himself, as he maintains, to expressing positions of a political nature, but as having explicitly and deliberately defended” the acts of an organisation “classified as terrorist by the European Union”. Such behaviour, given the responsibilities and the audience of the imam, is “likely to justify” an expulsion, according to the judge.
In June, the Gironde departmental expulsion commission had given an unfavorable – advisory – opinion on the religious man’s deportation. In 2022, publications on social networks had already led to an administrative closure of the Pessac mosque, finally annulled by the Bordeaux administrative court and then by the Council of State.
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