A French member of the European Parliament, Rima Hassan, has been charged with glorifying terrorism online in connection with a social media post, in which she quoted one of the perpetrators of a 1972 massacre in Israel.
Ms. Hassan, 33, who is among France’s best-known advocate for Palestinian rights, will be tried in July, the Paris prosecutor;s office announced on Thursday. If found guilty, she could face up to seven years in prison and a fine of 100,000 euros, or about $115,000.
The charges stem from a March 26 post on Ms. Hassan’s X account about Kozo Okamoto, a member of the Japanese Red Army terror group who participated in the 1972 killing of 26 people at the international airport in Lod, Israel. In her message, Ms. Hassan quoted Mr. Okamoto as saying, “I dedicated my youth to the Palestinian cause. As long as there is oppression, resistance will not only be a right, but a duty.”
The message was later deleted from Ms. Hassan’s account.
Ms. Hassan is expected to comment on the charge at a news conference on Friday.
A member of the far-left France Unbowed party and a polarizing figure in France, Ms. Hassan,made the rights of Palestinians central to her successful campaign for the European Parliament in 2024, at the height of Israel’s war in Gaza.
Critics of Ms. Hassan cheered the news of the charge, while supporters and allies said the justice system was being weaponized against her. n France, Islamist extremists have killed more than 200 people in dozens of attacks since 2015.
Manuel Bompard, the national coordinator for France Unbowed, said on French television that Ms. Hassan was the victim of a “judicial and political witch hunt” because of her “committed voice denouncing the genocide in Gaza.” He added that officials were “using the legal system to try to silence her on this subject.”
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez dismissed such criticism. “It is not political justice,” he said on television. “No one is above the law, especially on subjects as serious as the glorification of terrorism.”
Ms. Hassan is under investigation in six other cases, the prosecutor’s office said. Sixteen other cases involving allegations of online hate speech have been closed, it said.
Born in Syria in a Palestinian refugee camp, Ms. Hassan settled in France with her mother and siblings as a child, eventually earning a master’s degree in international law. She served as a legal rapporteur at France’s National Court of Asylum, which hears appeals from people whose applications for refugee status have been denied. In 2019, she founded the Observatory of Refugee Camps, a nonprofit organization dedicated to documenting conditions in such facilities.
Last year, she joined Greta Thunberg and other activists in an attempt to deliver aid to Gaza by boat, but the vessel was intercepted by Israel and the activists were briefly taken into custody. Returning to France, Ms. Hassan was greeted by a cheering crowd in the Place de la République, a traditional hub for left-wing protest in Paris.
The prosecutors’ statement said the police were carrying out a separate investigation over “substances resembling CBD and 3-MMC” that were found among her belongings. 3-MMC is a synthetic stimulant. Ms. Hassan said on social media that both products were CBD, and that she had bought them legally and used them for medicinal purposes.
Catherine Porter is an international reporter for The Times, covering France. She is based in Paris.
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