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Controversial Muslim Cleric Caught Being Smuggled Into U.S. Over Mexico border

• Telegraph.co.uk via DrudgeReport.com

U.S. border guards got a surprise when they searched a Mexican BMW and found a hardline Muslim cleric - banned from France and Canada - curled up in the boot.

Said Jaziri, who called for the death of a Danish cartoonist that drew pictures of the prophet Mohammed, was being smuggled into California when he was arrested, along with his driver Kenneth Robert Lawler.

The 43-year-old was deported from Canada to his homeland Tunisia in 2007 after it emerged he had lied on his refugee application about having served jail time in France.

 
Asylum: Jaziri had allegedly paid a Tijuana-based smuggling group $5,000 to get him across the border near Tecate, saying he wanted to be taken to a 'safe place anywhere in the U.S.'

Asylum: Jaziri had allegedly paid a Tijuana-based smuggling group $5,000 to get him across the border near Tecate, saying he wanted to be taken to a 'safe place anywhere in the U.S.'

His fire and brimstone sermons and rabble-rousing antics catapulted him into the public eye during his short tenure as imam at a Montreal mosque.

He branded homosexuality a disease and led protests over cartoonist Kurt Westergaard's illustrations poked fun at Islam and were published in a Danish newspaper in 2006.

He also caused anger when he campaigned for a bigger mosque to accommodate Montreal's burgeoning Muslim population.

 
Caught: Jaziri was arrested being smuggled across the San Diego border crossing, along with his driver Kenneth Robert Lawler

Caught: Jaziri was arrested being smuggled across the San Diego border crossing, along with his driver Kenneth Robert Lawler

But after his deportation he complained that he had been physically and mentally tortured during the 13-hour flight repatriating him to Tunisia, a claim Canadian authorities deny.

He was being held as a material witness in the criminal case against Mr Lawler, who has been charged with immigrant smuggling.