Rabat – Italy expelled a Moroccan imam on January 4 for security reasons.
Italian news outlet ADNKronos reported that Italy’s Interior Ministry ordered the imam’s deportation.
The Italian local media quoted the Minister of Interior Luciana Lamorgese as saying that ministry expelled the imam for “security reasons.”
The interior minister added that the 41-year old man was “investigated for expressing praise for the Al Baghdadi caliphate and supporting ISIS who fought in Syria.”
According to ADNKronos, the imam’s wife made a complaint against him in 2018, citing “mistreatment and injury that she suffered whenever she refused to wear the niqab.”
Authorities expelled the imam from the Bologna air border to Casablanca.
The imam was born in Morocco in 1978.
Read Also: Italy Repatriates 783 Moroccan Irregular Migrants in 2019
The man immigrated to Italy in 2006 where he obtained a residence permit from the immigration office in 2009.
Last year, Italy deported several Moroccans to their home country.
In January the security services in the European country expelled a 37-year old Moroccan for risk of radicalization.
Italy also expelled Salma Bencharki, the wife of Moroccan ISIS fighter Abderrahim Moutaharik, for security reasons.
Moutaharrik is a Moroccan kickboxer who received a six-year prison sentence in 2016 on terror charges. He is known as the “ISIS Boxer.”
Morocco, however, does not prosecute the wives and children of repatriated fighters. According to the head of Morocco’s Central Bureau of Judicial Investigation (BCIJ) Abdelhak El Khiame, women did not intend to leave Morocco to join jihadi movements. They only accompanied their husbands.
