4 months suspended prison sentence for an imam author of a sermon deemed anti-Semitic
The attorney general had requested a six-month suspended prison sentence. Imam Jean Iglesis’ lawyer immediately announced his intention to appeal to the Court of Cassation. For him, the court’s decision risks being “the door open to a religion police”. “It is a totally punitive decision, dictated by considerations which respect the law”, launched William Bourdon, another lawyer for Mohamed Tataiat.
“Come and kill him”
On the other hand, the lawyer for one of the civil parties, the Ben Gurion association, Jacques Samuel, considered that the court had “grasped the duplicity of the proposals” of the imam. For his part, Crif’s lawyer, Simon Cohen, recalled the “dangerous” nature of these proposals. In September 2021, he had however been released, before the appeal.
The debates had focused on a hadith (word of the Prophet Muhammad) included by Mohamed Tataiat, 59, in his prayer of December 15, 2017 at the mosque in the popular district of Empalot, in Toulouse. He then proclaimed: “The day of judgment will only come when the Muslims fight the Jews, the Jew will hide behind the tree and the stone, and the tree and the stone will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of God, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. »
20,000 euros in damages
Invited in Arabic through an interpreter, the Algerian imam, who has lived in France since 1985, assured that he “did not invite Muslims to fight the Jews or the Israelis” but to “not not participate in the movement that is leading to this tragic end”.