The former senator-mayor of Nice, Jacques Peyrat, responds to the allegations of Christian Estrosi, claiming that “my municipality could have and did not exercise the right of preemption belonging to the commune to obstruct the project of installing a mosque in the Var plain in Nice, at 1 Pontremoli Street. By insinuating the same, the municipality I led might have been complicit knowingly,” he says.
“This assertion is not only totally false but dishonest,” the former mayor retorts.
Explanations:
“The leaders of the religious association ‘En Nour’ themselves explained the conditions under which these premises were purchased: it was by chance during a summer 1998 stay of a wealthy Saudi vacationing on the Côte d’Azur, who came to pray in a premises on Grenoble Road, that he declared to the imam: ‘find a place, and I will buy it for you.’ In 2002, this Saudi, who at the time was not yet the Minister of Islamic Affairs of Saudi Arabia, became the owner of a private property that until then housed a restaurant. This search for premises and the operation took place in the greatest discretion.
My municipality was not only never informed of the project accompanying the purchase of these premises, but had no means to know the owner’s intention to establish a place of worship in this economic activity area named ‘Nice Méridia’, which at the time was undergoing major development.
If that had been the case, in accordance with my widely shared views on the opening of Muslim places of worship in the city of Nice, I would have certainly opposed it by exercising the right of preemption, as my municipality systematically did whenever premises for sale attracted buyers with a project to establish a Muslim place of worship.
I also remind you that it was the year following the election of Mr. Estrosi as mayor of Nice in 2008 that meetings related to the project of this Islamic cultural center were held at the Nice town hall, in the presence of the project’s promoters at the town hall, as Mr. Estrosi himself acknowledges, and led three years later to the signing of the construction authorization by the municipality of Mr. Estrosi, who now pretends to oppose a project after having supported it and authorized its construction,” Jacques Peyrat concludes.
Jacques Peyrat concludes: “The technique of Mr. Estrosi, consisting of taking credit for my achievements and shifting the responsibility for the failings of his municipality onto mine, is pathetic. Mr. Estrosi should ponder the Latin phrase: ‘No one is heard by a judge when they allege their own wrongdoing.’”
Will the story end here? It’s unlikely: “With these elements in place, I obviously reserve the possibility, depending on the elements transcribed in the Minutes of the municipal council meeting of April 25, 2016, to initiate legal proceedings,” adds… Maître Peyrat.
