In the past, “Sheik Abdellatif” has appeared at rallies or in videos with the old guard of Salafist hate preachers. In 2009, Rouali was suspected of recruiting young Muslims for “jihad”. Now he has been deported to his homeland.
He was considered one of the leading Islamist hate preachers in Germany. The Moroccan Abdellatif Rouali has been agitating against German democracy since 2008 via the radical Islamic Salafist network “Dawa FFM” from Frankfurt am Main. As the Hessian Ministry of the Interior confirmed to FOCUS online on Monday, the hate preacher was deported to his homeland on January 5, 2023.
In the past, “Sheik Abdellatif” has appeared at rallies or in videos with the old guard of Salafist hate preachers. In 2009, Rouali was suspected of recruiting young Muslims for “jihad” in Afghanistan or Pakistan. However, the procedure at that time was discontinued.
The assassin Arid Uka, who killed two US soldiers and seriously injured two other members of the army at Frankfurt Airport in March 2011, maintained close contact with the propagandist.
In 2013, the then Federal Minister of the Interior, Hans-Peter Friedrich (CSU), banned the “Dawa FFM” association, initially depriving Rouali of its fundamentalist platform. During a raid the year before, the authorities seized books glorifying the beating of women and the killing of “apostates”.
In addition, “DawaFFM” is said to have propagated the extermination of Jews, Americans and the Shiites hated by the Salafists in videos on the Internet. “Oh Allah, destroy them and let it be painful,” the “taz” quotes a Salafist hymn from the ban at the time.
Nevertheless, the radical imam continued to be heard in the hardcore scene. The state guards registered close ties to the German governor of the terrorist militia “Islamic State” (IS). Abu Walaa often asked the Hessian brother to give lectures at his spiritual center DIK in Hildesheim, Lower Saxony. Abu Walaa has since been sentenced to ten and a half years in prison. The Iraqi had recruited young Muslims for the IS with the help of his accomplices from Dortmund and Duisburg. At the same time he acted as a mentor for the IS terrorist Anis Amri. In December 2016, the Tunisian Islamist hijacked a truck, shot the driver and drove the 40-ton truck into the Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz in Berlin. A total of 13 people lost their lives and dozens more were injured, some seriously.
Abdellatif Rouali only came to the attention of the fringes of the investigation because he maintained connections to some of the protagonists around the local IS boss Abu Walaa. The state security officers did not take their eyes off the Moroccan. He attracted attention when an Islamist was temporarily arrested who allegedly planned an attack on the renowned bicycle race around the Henninger Turm. The suspect had apparently also been stimulated by Rouali’s hate speech. The suspicion was not confirmed due to a lack of evidence. However, the court sentenced the accused to two and a half years in prison for violations of the Weapons and Explosives Act and forgery of documents.
The Hessian security authorities have been monitoring Rouali for years. He often appeared with other religious agitators in corresponding clips on the Internet. In 2022, the militant Islamist left Germany. According to the Hessian Ministry of the Interior, the German authorities had obtained a ban on returning while he was abroad for a long time. “At the end of 2022, the person entered the Schenge area illegally via Italy,” said a ministry spokesman.
The Hessian police and immigration authorities immediately launched a search for Rouali. On January 4th they found what they were looking for and the next day they deported the preacher to Morocco. According to the Ministry of the Interior, the extremists are “banned from entering and staying in the country” for the next five years.
