Far-left anti-Israel French politician Rima Hassan visited a “Palestinian prisoner” without mentioning that the man in question is in prison for terrorism and attempted murder of Israelis.
On Monday, Hassan – along with LFI lawmakers Gabrielle Cathala and Thomas Portes, as well as Green Party MP Sabrina Sebaihi – paid a visit to “Ali” in the Val d’Oise prison. Hassan described Ali as a Palestinian who had been granted refugee status in France but has been “held in pre-trial detention for two years on the basis of accusations from the Israeli colonial state.”
“France has stripped him of his refugee status and sided with his oppressor without even waiting for him to be tried,” she wrote on X/Twitter.
Ali was indeed recognized as a refugee by the National Court of Asylum (CNDA) in 2020; however, his status was withdrawn by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) in February 2025.
He was indicted in May 2024 for “terrorist criminal association, financing terrorism, and complicity in attempted murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise” and subsequently imprisoned.
French lawmakers break prison rules during visit with Palestinian detainee facing life sentence
These offenses relate to acts allegedly committed in the “territories occupied by Israel” between April and September 2023. Ali, presumed innocent, disputes all the accusations, which, he explains, would have come from Israel.
He is said to have carried out the attacks on Israelis in the West Bank in early 2023.
At the time, a source close to the case told French media that the investigation was opened after communication from the Israeli justice system to the French authorities.
None of this was mentioned by either Hassan or a compatriot in their discussion of the visit.
Additionally, according to Europe 1, the group of politicians broke the rules of the prison during their visit, notably: Lawmakers may not discuss detainees’ legal cases, only their detention conditions. They are also not allowed to request access to a specific detainee unless a judge authorizes it.
A prison administration cannot stop a parliamentarian from accessing any place of detention in France.
Europe 1 reported that Hassan spoke with Ali in Arabic – a language prohibited in this context – giving him several hugs and discussing elements of his legal proceedings.
Ali, who faces the possibility of life imprisonment, has become something of a martyr figure in pro-Palestine spaces.
An Instagram page, Committee for the Liberation of Ali, was created to organize protesters and activists in support of his release.
"This visit is profoundly shocking," MP Caroline Yadan told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
"Unfortunately, it does not surprise me coming from La France Insoumise. Yes, members of parliament have the legal right to visit detention facilities, and that right is important in a democracy. But in this case, that parliamentary prerogative was clearly instrumentalized for political and ideological purposes."
"The facts are extremely serious. The man visited by several LFI elected officials has been formally placed under investigation for complicity in attempted assassinations linked to a terrorist enterprise, terrorist criminal conspiracy, and financing terrorism. He faces a potential life sentence. His pre-trial detention was ordered by an independent liberty and custody judge as part of an anti-terrorism judicial investigation conducted by the French justice system."
While Yadan said that everyone in France is presumed innocent, the presumption of innocence does not justify turning someone under investigation in a terrorism case "into a political symbol or a supposed victim" - something which Hassan did.
"This strategy of permanent distortion and confusion has become La France Insoumise’s trademark: relativizing everything, rewriting everything, reducing everything to an obsessive hostility toward Israel – to the point of losing all moral clarity when it comes to Islamist terrorism and antisemitism," Yadan told the Post.
What she said was "perhaps most concerning" regarding the visit was "the silence of part of the political class in the face of these developments."
"On issues such as these, there should be a clear republican line: no complacency toward Islamism, no ambiguity toward antisemitism, and no normalization of terrorism," Yadan concluded.