ALGIERS, April 25 (IslamOnline.net) - Italian authorities have expelled an Algerian teacher after leading worshippers in a funeral prayer in absentia for Hamas spiritual leader Sheik Ahmad Yassin, who was assassinated by an Israeli missile attack last month.

Abdul Karim al-Tibsi, a teacher of Arabic and Islam at the Islamic Center in Rome, told IslamOnline.net that he was ordered to leave the country despite being a legal resident for 12 years.

“One day later, an Italian newspaper ran an article by an Arab journalist, who named me as an Algerian terrorist and extremist and charged me with fake offences,” the father of one told IOL.

He went on: “I took the insults into my stride, but I was even appointed on March 28 as a councilor in a Rome municipality,” Tibsi added.

“But on April 22, Italian police knocked at my door and robbed me of my passport and residence permission. They afterwards took me to the airport for deportation.”

Algerian authorities notified Tibsi when he arrived in Algeria that the Italian Interior Ministry has charged him with belonging to a terrorist group.

There had been no word about Tibsi until he was allowed to phone his wife, who entrusted a lawyer to defend her husband’s right to return to Italy.

Under the Italian law, Tibsi has 60 days from his expulsion’s day to challenge the Italian decision before a court and 120 days to appeal to the President of the republic.

Tibsi is a member of the Union of Arab Communities in Italy and the representative of the Algerian Islamic Reform Movement in the south-central European country.

Italy has a Muslim population of some 500,000 representing only one percent of its 58 million people.

On Monday, November 17, 2003, the Italian government decided to deport an imam of a mosque on the grounds that he posed a threat to public security for warning of the possibility of terrorist attacks and making statements supporting al-Qaeda network.