The imam of the infamous An’Nur mosque in the Swiss city of Winterthur has been deported from the country after Somalia recognized him as a citizen and agreed to take him back.
The imam, who was sentenced to an 18 month suspended sentence in 2017 for preaching hate and calling on worshippers to enact violence against non-believers, was not cooperative with Swiss authorities when they attempted to determine which country he had originally come from, radio broadcaster RFJ reports.
Later that year, authorities rejected the 25-year-old’s asylum application and initially determined that he had originally come from Ethiopia but after intense investigations, the Swiss authorities were able to determine he was in fact a Somali national.
In late February of 2018, the imam was released from deportation detention whereupon he fled the country and was eventually captured in Germany and then taken back to Switzerland to once again be held for deportation.
The An’Nur mosque has become infamous as a place of Islamic radicalisation in the city of Winterthur, with German-Pakistani undercover journalist Shams Ul-Haq claiming it had been the most radical of hundreds of different mosques he had visited across Switzerland, Austria and Germany.
In 2015, Swiss journalist Kurt Pelda also linked the radical mosque to those who travelled or attempted to travel to the Middle East to join terrorist groups like the Islamic State.
“A man from Winterthur became radicalized in the last few months and recently travelled to Syria,” he said and added, “We do not know exactly what he has done in Syria but there is every indication it has to do with ISIS… ISIS has a cell in Winterthur in the An’Nur mosque, let there be no doubt.”
Following the revelations of the links to radical Islamic extremism, the city of Winterthur set up an anti-radicalisation centre in the city aimed at teaching both social workers and teachers how to spot the signs of radicalisation.
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