French-Palestinian MEP Rima Hassan in custody for 'apology for terrorism'
French-Palestinian MEP Rima Hassan was taken into police custody in France on Thursday for "apology for terrorism" after a post about Palestinian resistance, according to French media outlets.
On 26 March, the 33-year-old left-wing politician shared on X an article about Japanese pro-Palestinian activist Kozo Okamoto, a former member of the Japanese Red Army, who participated in an attack on Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel in 1972 that killed 26 passengers.
She accompanied the retweet with a quote by Okamoto, saying: “I gave my youth to the Palestinian cause. As long as there is oppression, resistance is not only a right, it is a duty.”
Far-right National Rally MP Matthias Renault filed a complaint with the Paris public prosecutor over the post.
He argued that it “explicitly refers to a perpetrator of a terrorist attack, repeats a quote about him without any distancing or condemnation, but for inspirational purposes, and associates this figure with a normative justification of resistance presented as a duty”.
Hassan later deleted the post but now faces charges of condoning acts of terrorism and potential drug offences, after a few grams of synthetic narcotics of unknown origin were reportedly found in her bag.
She could now be brought before a judge, released or have her detention extended.
'Political police'
According to Hassan’s supporters, her detention "marks a new stage in the judicial harassment aimed at silencing voices that defend the rights of the Palestinian people".
Former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of Hassan's party France Unbowed (La France Insoumise, LFI), condemned the detention as "unbearable".
"The political police have once again summoned Rima Hassan to police custody over a retweet from March. So there is no longer any parliamentary immunity in France", he wrote on X.
"The Yadan law has not been passed, but it's already being applied?," he added, referring to new legislation "aimed at combating renewed forms of antisemitism".
The proposed law is due to be debated by the French parliament in the coming days and has been accused of attempting to “prosecute anything critical of Israel”.
Fellow LFI MP Paul Vannier issued a statement in support of his colleague, saying she had been "harassed and summoned in violation of her parliamentary immunity".
"While the genocide continues, the government's relentless efforts to repress defenders of Palestine signal its downfall", he added.
Hassan has received several police summonses since the start of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza for posts referring to the "Palestinian armed resistance".
In April 2024, she was summoned for what authorities said was potentially “apology for terrorism” in relation to a LFI statement that drew a parallel between the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, described as "an armed offensive by Palestinian forces", and "the intensification of the Israeli occupation policy" in Palestine.
In March, Hassan was acquitted by a Strasbourg court over separate comments made on social media after she was refused permission to hold a conference on Palestine by the University of Strasbourg in November 2024.
However, this time she was summoned under custody regulations reserved for those who cannot be relied upon to attend their summonses. This was “mind-blowing”, a source within LFI told AFP, “given that she has always attended all her summonses”.
The use by French judicial authorities of the “apology for terrorism” offence has been on the rise since October 2023, with hundreds of investigations launched into comments made about Israel's war on Gaza.
Others investigated include Hassan’s fellow LFI MP Mathilde Panot and academic Francois Burgat, who was acquitted last year.
This article was sourced from Middle East Eye.
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