It has come to light that one of the imams providing religious services and psychological support for Muslims in Switzerland’s prisons is an ISIS supporter and another is a MİT agent working for the Erdoğan regime.
In Switzerland, the prison administrators appoint imams to provide religious services for Muslim convicts, but these imams are apparently appointed without a security control by the state.
The imams turning out to be affiliated with radical religious groups has alarmed the Swiss authorities while Saïda Keller-Messahli, an expert on Islam, pointed out two imams stationed in a prison in Zurich.
“PRISON IMAMS SHOULD BE THOROUGHLY VETTED”
Saïda Keller-Messahli exposed the scandal and demanded the Swiss government vet the imams appointed to prisons thoroughly. According to Messahli’s research, one of these two imams is a Macedonian man named Nebi Rexebi and the other is a Turkish man named Bilal Yıldız.
Nebi Rexebi is reportedly the leader of one of the radical Muslim organizations’ Salafist group. This imam reportedly has frequent visits to Balkan countries and spreads radicalist ideas there, and two imams in his community, Shefquet Krasniqi and Mazllam Mazllami, have been arrested in Kosovo.
“EXPERTS SHOULD BE APPOINTED INSTEAD OF IMAMS”
Turkish prison imam Bilal Yıldız is reported to be working for the Turkish intelligence agency MİT. Yıldız was stationed in Oerlikon before, in a mosque under the Turkish state’s Religious Affairs Directorate, and he left that position due to an investigation alleging him to be an agent.
Islam expert Saïda Keller-Messahli conducted a research and stated that she submitted the information she found on both imams to Swiss authorities in April, but no action was taken against them. Messahli demanded experts be appointed in prisons to provide psychological support for convicts instead of imams.
PRISONS IN GERMANY TRUSTED TO DİTİB
Germany has a similar problem: In Germany, imams who provide services for Muslim convicts are Turkish state public workers under the Religious Affairs Turkish-Islamic Union (DİTİB), an institution of the AKP regime.
Despite espionage investigations, many prison imams are still appointed by the DİTİB. But in recent months some state governments in Germany announced that they are no longer going to work with DİTİB because of the espionage scandal.
At the top of these states is North Rhine-Westphalia, where the number of DİTİB imams stationed in prisons was reduced from 117 to 12 in February 2015. In early July, Rheinland Pfalz State Minister of Justice FDP’s Herbert Metin had objected to DİTİB imams visiting convicts and arrestees in prisons.
