The Pantin mosque, frequented by around 1,300 worshipers, had been closed for six monthson the instructions of Gérald Darmanin. The Minister of the Interior reproached his officials in particular for having relayed on Facebook the video of a father of a student at the origin of the spiral that led to the Samuel Paty murder.
On October 16, an 18-year-old Chechen Russian refugee beheaded this history-geography teacher in a college in Conflans-Saint-Honorine (Yvelines), accusing him of having shown caricatures of Muhammad to his students. . After this tragedy, the Interior Ministry had promised “a war against the enemies of the Republic” and launched a series of operations against the Islamist movement. In his viewfinder thus appeared the imam of the mosque of Pantin, trained in Yemen and suspected of being “involved” in this movement. The latter had resigned on October 26.
But the Minister of the Interior and the Prefect of Seine-Saint-Denis had set a sine qua non condition for the early reopening of the mosque before Ramadan (mid-April): the departure of its rector, M’hammed Henniche . The latter, who had headed the Muslim Federation of Pantin since 2013, ended up withdrawing in mid-March, paving the way for the reopening of the place of worship.