BERLIN, 20 September 2004 — Berlin authorities have deported the main organizer of an Islamic conference planned in the German capital next month for his alleged radical anti-Israel and anti-US stance, authorities said yesterday.

Fadi Madi, spokesman for the “International Movement against American and Zionist Globalization and Supremacy,” was deported to his home country of Lebanon on Saturday evening, the Berliner Morgenpost reported. A Berlin police spokesman, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, confirmed Madi had been sent back to Beirut.

Madi was the main organizer for the Oct. 1-3 Arab Islamic Congress in Europe, which on its website urges “the liberation of all the occupied territories and countries in struggle against the American-Zionist hegemony and occupation.”

Organizers say they expect between 500 and 800 participants, but have declined to say who will speak and where in Berlin the gathering will be held.

Gabriel Daher, a Berlin-based spokesman for the organization, would not say whether Madi’s deportation would affect the plans for the conference.

“You’ll have to ask Mr. Madi in Beirut,” he told the Associated Press.

Madi had been in Beirut last week drumming up support for the conference, and was confronted by Berlin state authorities when he returned to the German capital and told he would have to leave the country, the Berliner Morgenpost reported.

“Whoever, as a foreign national, does not recognize the laws of our country and uses Germany as a platform from which to campaign against other countries and praise terror attacks forfeits his rights to stay in Germany,” Berlin Interior Senator Ehrhart Koerting told the newspaper.

Federal prosecutors had been investigating Madi on suspicion he belonged to a banned organization and approved of the move to deport him, the newspaper reported.

Germany’s top security official, Interior Minister Otto Schily, said last week that the conference “seems to fall under the heading of justifying terrorist acts” and that he was working with Berlin authorities to try and ban it.

On Friday, the federal government said the Foreign Ministry had instructed German embassies worldwide to refuse visas to anyone who says they want to attend.

Germany’s main Muslim organization, the Central Council of Muslims, sought to distance themselves from the conference, with spokesman Mounir Azzaoui telling the Morgenpost “the organizers are unimportant individuals and splinter groups that are not known to us.”