Spain to deport MB Imam over extremist behavior

CAIRO – 19 April 2018: Spanish-based member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group, Alaa Mohamed Said, was arrested and deported to Egypt for being “a national security threat,” the Spanish newspaper La Rioja reported on Thursday.

According to the Spanish daily La Rioja, the Secretary of State for Security, José Antonio Neiton, issued a decree ordering security forces to detain the MB-affiliated Egyptian, who has been the imam of a mosque in Logroño, which is located on Villegas Street in the Spanish province of La Rioja.

Said was reported to have been spreading the terrorist ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, and posing a threat to Spanish national security, the report said.




It also stated that the deportation order was issued on March 7 and that Said was supposed to leave the country before April 12. On the same day, Said came forward to a court in Logroño to have his deportation order revoked, the report said, adding that the court turned down his request and upheld the deportation order.

He was arrested and held at the foreign detention center in Madrid pending deportation. The newspaper highlighted that Said requested to be allowed to depart voluntarily to Turkey, which is a close ally to the Muslim Brotherhood, but the Spanish authorities declined his request, the report said.

Said arrived in Spain in 2004 thanks to the agreement between the Islamic Commission in Spain and the Egyptian Government to provide a quota of Egyptian imams to serve local communities there.