AA/Nice/Feïza Ben Mohamed
The president of the Pessac mosque, Abdourahmane Ridouane, was released Wednesday morning from the Administrative Detention Center (CRA) in which he had been locked up since August 8, and was able to return to Gironde, where he is domiciled, Anadolu learned from a source close to the case.
Accompanied by his lawyer, Maître Sefen Guez Guez, he arrived in Gironde where he was warmly welcomed by his supporters who came in large numbers to wait for him on the station square and congratulate him after months of a fierce fight to find his freedom.
Despite his release after 90 days (maximum legal period), the religious leader is now under house arrest and must report three times a day to the town of Pessac, which he does not have the right to leave and where he is domiciled. .
In parallel with this measure, he will appear in court next January for having shared a publication in which Ismaïl Haniyeh was described as a resistance fighter, on the social network X.
After his placement in police custody for these facts, his lawyer published a press release to denounce a “SLAPP procedure based on comments dating back several months” and which aims “to prevent the release” of his client. , already “deprived of his loved ones since August 8, 2024 and far from the Pessac mosque that he founded” (he has finally been released since).
“To prevent his exit, the Minister of the Interior made a report on October 28 of comments which, according to him, constituted an apology for an act of terrorism,” explained the council.
And to continue: “We denounce the particular speed with which the Prosecutor’s Office responded to the report from the Ministry of the Interior to defeat the prospect of the release of the president of the Pessac mosque. In 48 hours, a man was placed in police custody, while it took more than 12 months for Meyer Habib, author of comments on the Palestinian people described as a cancer, to see a simple investigation opened against him. .
As a reminder, the Council of State rejected, last September, the appeal brought by the president of the Pessac mosque (Gironde), Abdourahmane Ridouane, to contest his expulsion from French territory.
The highest administrative court in the country, in fact, considered in its decision that the publications of the person concerned were likely to justify his expulsion, and that he “does not prove that it would constitute an attack on his fundamental freedoms “.
The Paris administrative court had already ruled in this direction on August 10, establishing the same conclusions for publications particularly linked to the ongoing war in Gaza.
This decision came even though, a few days earlier, he had won an appeal brought before the administrative courts ordering the prefecture to issue him a residence permit.
During the month of June, the Bordeaux judicial court also issued an opinion unfavorable to this expulsion.
For the commission responsible for examining the expulsion request made by the Prefecture, “Mr. Ridouane’s Facebook publications – the only basis used by the Prefecture – do not demonstrate that the latter would behave in a way likely to harm fundamental interests of the State”, then related Master Sefen Guez Guez, Abdourahmane Ridouane’s lawyer.
In an interview with Anadolu, the latter believed that his client was targeted by the authorities because of “his attachment to the defense of the Palestinian cause and his criticism of France’s international policy, including in Niger, his country of origin.” origin “.
Although Abdourahmane Ridouane was indeed searched and arrested on August 8 and placed in CRA awaiting his expulsion, the authorities were unable to send him back to Niger, from where he arrived in 1990.
According to information from Anadolu, Niger did not respond to the request for a consular permit, the only document allowing his return, in the absence of Abdourahmane Ridouane’s passport.
The prefecture of Gironde, for its part, announced on Wednesday, after his release, that it would make a new report against the president of the Pessac mosque for acts qualified as “failure to cooperate and execute a expulsion decision”.
Only part of the dispatches, which the Anadolu Agency broadcasts to its subscribers via the Internal Broadcasting System (HAS), is broadcast on the AA website, in summary form. Please contact us to subscribe.
Related News :