Belgium court refuses preacher’s extradition to France

A Belgian court on Friday refused to extradite an imam, Hassan Iquioussen, to France to face charges of hate speech and anti-Semitism, according to one of his lawyers.

But prosecutors immediately lodged an appeal, and said the matter will be heard by a higher court within two weeks.

The Islamic preacher was arrested in Belgium on September 30 under a European warrant after entering that country from France, where he had been living, and is being held in jail.

His lawyer, Nicolas Cohen, said Iquioussen risked being treated unfairly by authorities in France.

His client appeared in the court in Tournai on Friday in a closed-door hearing.

France’s top administrative court in August gave the green light for Iquioussen to be expelled to Morocco, overturning a lower French court’s block on his deportation.

France’s interior ministry ordered the deportation on grounds that the 58-year-old imam — who had been preaching over the internet from his home in northern France — had given “especially virulent anti-Semitic speech” and sermons calling for women’s “submission” to men.

It has classified the imam as a threat to national security.

Iquioussen’s lawyers argue the preacher “respected French law” by leaving France of his own volition and questioned the need for an extradition order to send him back.

They also said that the French offence of dodging a deportation order did not have an equivalent in Belgian law and should therefore be rejected.

Born in France, Iquioussen opted at age 17 not to take French nationality, saying he was pressured by his father not to do so. His five children and 15 grandchildren are French, and he tried in vain later to acquire French citizenship.