France cracks down on radical Muslim clerics

Hindustan Times:

Agence France-Presse

Paris, July 31, 2005

France's tough-talking interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, has launched a series of measures he says will show "zero tolerance" for Muslim clerics who preach violence and recruit young men for jihad, or holy war.

In just a week, two imams out of about a dozen threatened with either expulsion or losing their French nationality were sent back to Algeria.

Reda Ameuroud, 35, an imam expelled on Friday, was arrested more than two weeks ago in what authorities called "a preventive anti-terror operation" in a Paris neighbourhood that is home to a mosque known for attracting radicals.

Another Algerian, Abdelhamid Aissaoui, 41, was banished from France on July 23. He was an "occasional imam", who had been sentenced to four years in prison for participating in an attempted attack in 1995 on a high-speed train near Lyon, organized by Algeria's Armed Islamic Group (GIA).

French authorities have zeroed in on a dozen imams, most of them from North Africa but also some from Turkey, who are preaching in and around cities with large immigrant populations like Paris, Lyon and Marseille.