France prepares to expel radical Islamist leaders

Jon Henley:

France has expelled two radical Islamist leaders in the wake of the London bombings and plans to round up and send home up to two dozen more by the end of the month, the interior ministry said yesterday.

Underlining the difference in approach between London and Paris, a ministry spokesman said France had "no problem" deporting speakers accused of inflaming anti-western feeling even if they were French citizens and recognised as preachers by France's 6 million-strong Muslim community.

Reda Ameuroud, a 35-year-old Algerian who was staying in France illegally, was deported on Friday, the spokesman said.
Mr Ameuroud's "violent and hate-filled" speeches at a radical mosque in Paris's 11th arrondissement prompted the French intelligence services to classify him as an "ideological reference point".

He is the brother of Abderahmane Ameuroud, 27, who was sentenced to seven years in prison and banned from French territory in May after being convicted of giving "logistical support" to two Tunisians who assassinated the Afghan resistance leader Ahmed Shah Massood in 2001.

Another "part-time" imam, Abdelhamid Aissaoui, 41, was expelled from France earlier last week for urging youths to join the jihad or holy war, the spokesman said. He had already served a four-year jail term for his role in an attempted 1995 bomb attack on a high-speed TGV train near Lyon, mounted by an Algerian extremist group, the GIA.

The spokesman said about 1,100 imams have been identified in France and "the vast majority pose no problem at all". About 50% are regular speakers, 150 preach occasionally, and the remainder officiate only at Friday prayers. Some 30% are Moroccan, 20% Algerian and 15% Turkish.

According to the ministry, the radical imams and ideologists targeted for expulsion are mainly North African and Turkish, and based in or around major cities with large Muslim populations such as Lyon, Marseille and Paris.

French intelligence services consider that about 40 of the country's 1,500 mosques and prayer centres are under the influence of radical ideologies ranging from "classic fundamentalism to violent and hate-filled rhetoric".

Police and ministry officials acknowledge that the greatest threat comes from occasional speakers who often have no formal training and little knowledge of the Qur'an but can exercise considerable influence over the youth of France's deprived big-city suburbs.

The planned arrests and expulsions follow remarks by the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, who said in the immediate aftermath of the London attacks that France "has to act against radical preachers capable of influencing the youngest and most weak-minded".

French officials, who rarely allow such concerns as freedom of speech or human rights to get in the way of security interests, have often accused Britain of not being tough enough with Islamist "preachers of hate", coining the name "Londonistan" for London.

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