Tehran - BORNA - At a pro-Palestine rally in Turin on October 9, Mohamed Shahin, former imam of the San Salvario mosque, called the October 7, 2023, al-Aqsa Flood operation an act of “resistance after years of occupation.”
Shahin, 46, has been held at a repatriation center in Caltanissetta, Sicily, since he was detained in a dawn raid by counter-terrorism police on November 24, after the Ministry of Interior issued an expulsion order and revoked his residence permit.
Shahin, who has applied for asylum, told a judge at the Turin Court of Appeal that his deportation to Egypt would allegedly put him at risk of torture and even death, as he is a known critic of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
“I don’t encourage violence. What I've always said is that the Palestinian people must have their own sovereignty," he said in the court.
According to Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano, Turin’s prosecutor's office had found no evidence that Shahin’s comments had violated the penal code.
Ismaele La Vardera, a member of the Sicilian regional assembly, slammed his deportation order as “absolutely disproportionate, unworthy of a democratic country.”
About 180 academics also issued an open letter calling for Shahin’s release.
Meanwhile, a network of Turin’s religious leaders wrote to Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi expressing “shock and concern” at Shahin's imminent deportation.
They said that he was “a key figure in interfaith dialogue and with institutions” and that his expulsion would “jeopardize years of fruitful, peaceful coexistence.”
On Friday, participants in a nationwide protest, called by Unione Sindacale di Base (USB Union), were seen holding signs urging Shahin’s release.
The pro-Palestine protest, which was attended by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, decried the Italian government's complicity in Israel's genocide in Gaza.
Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza has killed nearly 70,000 Palestinians since October 7, 2023, following the al-Aqsa Storm operation, before a ceasefire was reached last October.
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