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ITALY EXPELS MUSLIM CLERIC

(ANSA) - Turin, January 9 - Italy on Wednesday deported to Morocco a Muslim cleric who the interior ministry said posed a risk for national security.
Mohamed Kohaila, 44, was an imam or prayer leader at a mosque in Turin who was secretly filmed last year giving what was considered to be an anti-Western sermon.

The video was broadcast by state television on a news talk show in March after which both local judicial authorities and the interior ministry opened investigations.
Although the magistrates here decided the case should be shelved, a probe by the interior ministry, which re-translated the video footage, concluded that the imam was dangerous and should be expelled.
Kohaila had been in Italy for the past 15 years and operated a specialised butcher shop in Turin.
He was considered to be the right hand of another Turin imam, Bouriki Bouchta, who was expelled from Italy in September 2005.
The interior ministry probe said the taped sermon had an ''extreme anti-West slant'', with the imam telling his followers not to integrate with Christians and Jews because they were ''infidels''.
Kohaila has denied that the sermon was anti-West.
The interior ministry investigators also said that evidence gathered showed that Kohaila still had ties with Bourriki Bouchta.
Kohaila can appeal his deportation order but will have to do so from outside Italy.

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