Belgium withdraws residence permit of "Salafist" Saudi imam

BRUSSELS – Belgium took steps to expel a Saudi imam who preaches at the country's biggest mosque for spreading extremist ideology, the immigration minister said on Tuesday.

The imam's residence permit was withdrawn as a prelude to expelling him. He had lodged an appeal against that decision which, if it failed, would oblige him to leave the country, Minister Theo Francken told radio station BelRTL.

Brussels' Grand Mosque, which was leased to Saudi Arabia for 99 years in the 1960s as part of an energy deal, has faced repeated accusations from local politicians of propagating ultra-conservative forms of Islam.