French police summon for questioning far-left candidate who called Oct. 7 ‘legitimate’

Police in France summon for questioning a French-Palestinian candidate from a far-left party they suspect of “advocating terrorism” in connection with her past statements justifying Hamas’s devastating October 7 attack on Israel.

Rima Hassan, a lawyer and activist who is running for the European Parliament election in June on the ticket of Jean-Luc Melenchon’s LFI party, is to come in for questioning on April 30 in Paris, according to a report Friday by Le Monde.

The summons follows the interior ministry’s ban on holding an event focused on the Palestinian cause that LFI had planned to hold on Thursday. Police are also preventing several rallies planned by Melenchon, a firebrand politician who has inveighed against Israel and its Jewish supporters in the past. Authorities fear the rallies may incite violence and compromise public order.

Hassan’s lawyer, Vincent Brengarth, calls the summons “astounding” and an attempt “to criminalize Hassan’s efforts to raise awareness to the urgency of the situation in Gaza.”

Hassan tells Le Monde she will cooperate with police.

Hassan is controversial in France for an interview from November 29, in which she says it’s “true” that Hamas’s October 7 onslaught is a “legitimate action” and that it is “false” that Israel has a right to defend itself, or that a two-state solution is possible.