LDuring the hearing, on May 30, 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 police of religion”. “It is a totally punitive decision, dictated by considerations that go beyond the law”said William Bourdon, another lawyer for Mohamed Tataiat.
On the other hand, the lawyer for one of the civil parties, the Ben Gurion association, Jacques Samuel, expressed his « satisfaction » and sound ” relief “considering that the court had indeed “seized the duplicity of the words” by M. Tataiat.
For his part, the lawyer for the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif), Simon Cohen, insisted on recalling the character ” dangerous “ of these words.
During the hearing, the debates focused on a hadith (word of the Prophet Mohammed) included by Mohamed Tataiat, 59, in his sermon on December 15, 2017 at the mosque in the popular district of Empalot, in Toulouse.
According to the text of the sermon translated during the investigation, the imam quotes a hadith proclaiming: “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, except Algharqada, which is one of the trees of the Jews’”.
The sermon was delivered amid tensions between Palestinians and Israelis, after former US President Donald Trump announced his intention to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Speaking in Arabic through an interpreter, the Algerian imam, who has lived in France since 1985, assured that he “did not invite Muslims to fight Jews or Israelis” but, on the contrary, “not to participate in the movement that leads to this tragic end”.
Nearly a dozen associations had brought civil action, including the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (Licra), Crif, SOS Racism or the General Alliance against Racism and for the Respect of Identity. French and Christian (Agrif, close to fundamentalist Catholics).
The Court of Appeal also sentenced Mr. Tataiat to pay nearly 20,000 euros in damages to these associations. On September 14, 2021, the criminal court of Toulouse (south-west) had released the imam but the prosecution had immediately appealed.