Members of Hassan’s La France Insoumise party condemn detention as part of effort to ‘intimidate’ Palestine supporters.
Published On 2 Apr 2026
European Parliament member Rima Hassan has been detained in France on suspicion of “apology for terrorism”, French media outlets are reporting, in a move members of her left-wing La France Insoumise (LFI) party say aims to silence Palestine supporters.
Le Parisien newspaper reported on Thursday that Hassan was detained in relation to an investigation into a social media post that referenced Kozo Okamoto, who took part in a deadly attack at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport in 1972.
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Hassan had deleted the post on X, Le Parisien said.
Jean-Luc Melenchon, the founder of LFI, said in a social media post on Thursday that Hassan’s detention related to a retweet from last month. “So there is no longer parliamentary immunity in France. Intolerable,” he wrote on X.
Le Parisien and the AFP news agency also reported that a small amount of “synthetic drugs” was found on Hassan when she was taken into police custody.
Hassan and her lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Reuters news agency on her detention.
Hassan, a French-Palestinian lawyer and activist, was elected to the European Parliament in 2024.
The 33-year-old has been a prominent critic of Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and she took part in a Gaza-bound flotilla that was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters in October 2025.
Her Palestine advocacy has drawn the ire of pro-Israel groups and figures in France and other countries.
Last week, Hassan said she was denied entry to Canada, where she was expected to take part in meetings and speaking engagements, in what she described as an act of censorship.
In late March, Matthias Renault, a French politician with the far-right Rassemblement national (National Rally) party, said he alerted the chief prosecutor in Paris about Hassan’s X post that referenced Okamoto.
Renault welcomed Hassan’s detention on Thursday, writing on social media: “Finally the beginning of the end of impunity for the LFI MP!”.
But lawmakers and officials from Hassan’s party condemned her detention.
“The French police and justice system are being used to intimidate those who support the Palestinian people,” said Sophia Chikirou, an LFI MP in the French National Assembly, the lower house of parliament.
Mathilde Panot, an MP who heads the LFI delegation in the National Assembly, said that in President Emmanuel Macron’s France, “the criminalisation of political opponents has reached a new level”.
“This relentless attack, trampling on the most fundamental rights, must end immediately,” Panot wrote on X.