In a legal battle that began in July, France’s Council of State is to rule early next week on the legality of interior minister Gérald Darmanin’s order for the expulsion to Morocco of imam Hassan Iquioussen, accused of promoting anti-Semitism and opposition to gender equality, and acting as an apologist for terrorism. Mediapart can reveal that the high-profile, hardline interior minister in fact once enjoyed cordial relations with the imam when he sought to woo Muslim voters while campaigning for election as mayor of the town of Tourcoing, and when Iquioussen’s anti-Semitic diatribes were already known. Lou Syrah reports.
In recent months France's interior minister Gérald Darmanin has ordered the expulsion of around a dozen Chechens from the country. This does not just trample over fundamental rights of asylum and the country's commitments under European treaties, says Mediapart's co-founder François Bonnet in this op-ed article. He argues it also means that France is effectively collaborating with Chechen's notorious leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a man accused of overseeing the murder and torture of his opponents.
Mehdi Medjahed has lived in France for 13 years, is a qualified fire safety security guard and is one of those “front line” heroes praised by French president Emmanuel Macron for working during the coronavirus epidemic. Yet when the 36-year-old was stopped by police and questioned over his immigration status, the situation not only developed into a violent confrontation, he was arrested, placed in custody and then a detention centre, and now finds himself the subject of a deportation order. Olivier Bertrand reports.
The French overseas territory of New Caledonia will hold a referendum on November 4th to decide whether the South Pacific archipelago should opt for self-rule. It comes after a 30-year political process to ease continuing high tensions between pro-independence militants from the indigenous Kanak population and the community of ethnic Europeans. The territory has a chequered and often violent history since it became a French possession in 1853, which Mediapart is charting this summer in a series of articles which examine the construction of what was a most singular colonial project. Here, Lucie Delaporte returns to the story of how the defeated militants of the 1871 Paris Commune were deported to New Caledonia alongside Algerian tribesmen who led one of the first major revolts against French rule in Algeria.
Loup Bureau, 27, who has been detained for almost two months in Turkey since he was arrested on the Iraqi-Turkish when he was found in posession of pictures and interviews with members of a Kurdish militia, is due to be deported back to France this weekend.
School students in France have resumed their protests over the deportation of Roma schoolgirl Léonarda who was arrested during a school trip. However, this controversial case was not an isolated incident. Under socialist president François Hollande the deportation of school students who have reached the age of majority and lack residence permits has occurred with greater frequency than under his right-wing predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy. Mediapart’s Michaël Hajdenberg gives the background to the deportations and then hears the moving story of a school pupil in France who was arrested this summer on his way to an exam and sent back to Mali five days later.
A senior figure in the Socialist Party has angrily criticised French culture minister Aurélie Filippetti for allegedly snubbing Rivesaltes, a former internment and deportation camp in southern France which is set to become a memorial in 2015, during a recent trip to the area. The culture minister has dismissed the claims as 'absurd'. To understand the importance of the memorial site behind this political squabble, Mediapart asked historian Denis Peschanski to describe the political and historical issues at stake in a camp that revives some of the worst memories of the Second World War in France. Antoine Perraud reports.
