The judiciary will have to decide on the 31st of May. The court in Bordeaux will examine the Bordeaux prefecture’s request as to whether or not Abdouramane Ridouane, Nigerian imam of the Pessac mosque in the Gironde region, should be deported. His lawyer explained that his client is accused of ‘his attachment to the defence of the Palestinian cause and his criticism of France’s international policy, including in his home country of Niger’. Sefen Guez Guez added: ‘This agitation is just another example of the authorities’ desire to silence any protesting voice in order to promote themselves in the run-up to the European elections’.
In 2022, the Ministry of the Interior called for the Al-Farouq mosque in Pessac to be closed down because it promoted a ‘Salafist ideology’. Fabienne Buccio, the former prefect of the Gironde department, had also initiated proceedings in order to close the mosque temporarily. It was suspected that the centre regularly hosted imams known for their affiliation to the Islamist movement and their Salafist ideology. The prefecture had even announced a six-month closure.
However, Abdouramane Ridouane’s lawyer insisted that the place of worship had ‘won its cases’. The judge for summary proceedings at the administrative court had declared that the mosque’s internet publications that had led to the closure were ‘not of such an extremist nature that they would incite to commit acts of terrorism by means of hatred and violence’. Gérald Darmanin had appealed in vain. The Constitutional Council had ruled that the temporary closure was ‘a police measure that constitutes a serious and manifestly unlawful interference with religious freedom’.