After the administrative court rendered its decision and validated the expulsion of the imam, returned to Tunisia to his country of origin, Mahjoub Mahjoubi reacted to the microphone of France 3 Occitanie.
“I expected it. I won’t give up”. After the validation of his expulsion by the Paris administrative court, Mahjoub Mahjoubi, imam of Bagnols-sur-Cèze, in Gard, delivered his first reaction to France 3 Occitanie. “Despite the appeal filed by my lawyer, I expected this decision because there have been other cases before me,” launches Mahjoub Mahjoubi, the former imam of Bagnols-sur-Cèse from Tunisia, his country of origin, where he was expelled last week.
I was made the scapegoat for immigration law.
Mahjoub MahjoubiImam of Bagnols-sur-Cèze, expelled to Tunisia
“We separated a father from his five children, the youngest of whom has cancer.”
Imam Mahjoub Mahjoubi, accused of calling for hatred targeting women and Jews in his sermons, was expelled to Tunisia less than 12 hours after the declarations of Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior who had requested the withdrawal of his residence permit.
His lawyer had filed a request for interim relief (emergency procedure) to contest this expulsion order. This Monday, March 4, Me Samir Hamroun, the imam’s counsel immediately announced that he was appealing after validation of the summary judgment.
Installed in France in the 1980s, Mahjoub Mahjoubi was in the sights of the Minister of the Interior.
He was notably accused of having broadcast a video in which he described the “tricolor flag” – without specifying whether it was the French flag – as a “satanic flag” which would have “no value with Allah ( God in Arabic). The person concerned defended himself, saying that he had made a “slip of the tongue”.
Today, he who says he was unfairly judged remotely, adds that he has confidence in French justice.