Accused of “incitement to hatred”, Tunisian imam Mahjoub Mahjoubi was arrested in Gard with a view to expulsion, announces his lawyer

Gard imam Mahjoub Mahjoubi was arrested a little after noon on Thursday February 22, his lawyer announced to BFMTV. “Police officers came to his home in Bagnols-sur-Cèze to notify him of an expulsion order from the Ministry of the Interior with immediate administrative detention” in a center located in the Paris region, said Samir Hamroun who added that an appeal will be filed. His client is, in his words, “stunned, upset” by this questioning.

The Minister of the Interior had requested on Sunday the withdrawal of his residence permit due to“calls to hatred”. In a video relayed on social networks, the imam of Bagnols-sur-Cèze, Mahjoub Mahjoubi, described in particular the “tricolour flag” of “satanic flag” which does not have “no value with Allah“. Tuesday, the prefect Jérôme Bonet affirmed on franceinfo that there was in this specific case “obviously a call to hatred“. According to him, “we are dealing with content which fundamentally calls into question our values ​​and which falls within the scope of the law“.