Meloni: 'How we are supposed to defend safety of Italians?'

Italian PM Meloni fumes after court frees imam arrested for defending October 7

Appeals court rules Mohamed Shahin free to go despite interior minister ordering him deported; Turin Islamic leader said Hamas onslaught was not violent; government likely to appeal

Mohamed Shahin, an Egyptian imam who heads a Muslim community in Turin, Italy, was ordered freed from custody this week by a local court following his arrest last month for defending Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel.

The decision to release Shahin was met with anger from Italian Prime Giorgia Meloni, who blasted the court’s decision in a statement on Monday.

“We are talking about a person who described the October 7 attack as an act of ‘resistance,’ denying its violence. Where I come from, that means justifying — if not inciting — terrorism,” wrote Meloni.

“Can someone explain to me how we are supposed to defend the safety of Italians if every initiative aimed in that direction is systematically overturned by certain judges?”

According to the ANSA Italian news agency, Shahin was arrested in November and Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi issued an order to have him deported from Italy due to his comments.

However, a court in Turin on Monday ruled in favor of an appeal by Shahin’s lawyers, the agency reported, saying that there were no “public safety” grounds to justify his arrest.

His attorneys have also argued that Shahin would face danger if he were deported back to Egypt, since he has been an outspoken critic of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.

The news agency reported that Shahin was arrested after he described Hamas’s October 7 attack — in which terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, kidnapping 251 and committing numerous atrocities — to be “not a violation and neither was it violence.”

According to Italian media reports, the court reinstated Shahin’s residency permit after it was revoked by Piantedosi’s order. The government is likely to appeal the decision.

The Agenzia Nova news agency reported that Shahin, who has led a mosque in the northern Italian city for more than a decade, was arrested on November 24. The court found that accusations that he had contact with individuals who were convicted of or investigated for terrorism were “isolated and decidedly dated,” the outlet said.

The L’Unione Sarda newspaper reported that the Turin Court of Appeals ruled that Shahin did not present a “concrete and present danger,” and that during his two decades in Italy, he has had a “completely clean criminal record.”

Last month, a group of protesters in Turin vandalized the main office of the newspaper La Stampa, breaking into the building and covering it with graffiti such as “Free Palestine” and “Newspapers complicit with Israel,” in addition to hanging a banner saying “Free Shahin,” a reference to the imam.

The newspaper said that the protesters were “shouting terrorist journalists, you’re number one on the list!'” and that “they stormed the newsroom and tore up valuable books and documents that we use daily for our work.”

AFP contributed to this report.