France puts a pro-Palestinian MEP on trial. The case raises uncomfortable questions about free speech and political pressure.

Rima Hassan has become accustomed to legal trouble. The French Palestinian member of the European Parliament, born stateless in a refugee camp in Syria, was detained by Israeli forces last year after joining the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. She described being handcuffed, searched and placed in solitary confinement. France, to its discredit, said little at the time. It is saying rather more now, and for reasons that reflect poorly on the republic.

On Thursday 3 April, French police arrested Hassan and held her in custody for several hours. The charge was “apology for terrorism,” arising from a post she had made on X on 26 March. The post referenced Kōzō Okamoto, a member of the Japanese Red Army who participated in the 1972 attack at Lod Airport in Israel, in which 26 people were killed. Hassan had deleted the post. The Paris prosecutor’s office nonetheless announced that she will stand trial on 7 July 2026.

The political choreography around her arrest repays scrutiny. It was Matthias Renault, a lawmaker from the far-right Rassemblement National, who brought Hassan’s post to the attention of prosecutors. He greeted her detention with evident satisfaction, describing it as “the beginning of the end of impunity.” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, founder of France Insoumise, to which Hassan belongs, was unsparing: “So there is no longer parliamentary immunity in France,” he wrote. “Intolerable.” Mathilde Panot, who leads the LFI delegation in the National Assembly, said the affair confirmed that in Emmanuel Macron’s France, “the criminalisation of political opponents has reached a new level.”

The government’s response has been to insist that the law applies to everyone. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told BFMTV that advocating terrorism is a serious offence and that rules must be respected. This is, on one level, unobjectionable. On another, the selective application of such rules, particularly against a vocal critic of Israeli policy during an active war in which France has interests, is precisely the kind of thing that erodes confidence in judicial independence. Critics are not wrong to call this what it looks like: harassment by legal means.

Sources: France 24 (3 April 2026); Al Jazeera (3 April 2026); Euronews (3 April 2026); Democracy Now! (3 April 2026)