Italy has expelled three radical Islamic extremists deemed to be security risks, including an Egyptian imam who headed an Islamic cultural association in the province of Venice.
The Egyptian imam headed the Islamic association La Pace — “Peace” — and is said to have subscribed to Salafism, a radical Islamic sect followed by many terrorist groups across the globe.
The Italian Interior Ministry released a statement on the imam’s deportation, saying according to Il Gazzettino: “He has been in contact with people, including in other European states, gravitating to Islamist circles and dedicated to criminal conduct. He openly expressed his extremist thinking during an oration held at the Salafist ‘al-Nur’ mosque in Berlin.”
The al-Nur mosque has been known for hosting imams with radical views in the past, including in 2015 when Imam Sheikh Abdel Moez al-Eila called for women to be confined to their husband’s homes and claimed a wife is forbidden from refusing to sleep with her husband.
The second extremist deported was a Tunisian who had become radicalised by an Algerian preacher who had been expelled in 2018. The migrant had evaded arrest in 2017 but was later found in Switzerland in October of last year.
The final deportee was also a Tunisian who attracted the attention of German intelligence when he moved from Italy to Germany in 2015 with his Italian wife, who had been reported missing by her father. Investigations claimed he tried to convince his wife to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State.
Italy has deported several radical imams in the last several years, including a Morrocan imam earlier this year who posted antisemitic and anti-Christian messages on social media.
Last year, Tunisian radical imam Mahmoud Jebali, who came to Italy illegally, told prison officers he would kill them as he awaited deportation.
“Sooner or later you will all die, we will go into your houses and kill you and eat your corpses,” he told the officers.