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The French left deputy Rima Hassan remained in Israeli custody and on Tuesday he was ready for an audition earlier than an Israeli choose, after being arrested the day earlier than seven different folks.
Hassan was a part of the “Freedom Flotilla”, a gaggle of activists who left on June 3 from Catania, in Italy, to attempt to ship humanitarian support to Gaza on the boat however had been intercepted by the Israel authorities about 200 kilometers from the coast of Sunday night.
The Ministry of Israeli Foreign Affairs then stated that the crew of Madleen’s ship had been provided with water and sandwich, however Hassan’s group stated that after a brief, filmed, the distribution of sandwich through the arrest, water or meals was not supplied through the 16 -hour journey to the port of Ashdod, that the crew was pressured to spend on the ship of the ship till water was supplied.
The 12 members of the Freedom Flotilla had been due to this fact introduced with a doc that urged them to acknowledge that they’ve illegally entered the Israeli territory. By signing it it meant fast expulsion, whereas the refusal would have led to being introduced earlier than a choose.
Four of them selected the primary choice, together with the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, the Spaniard Sergio Toribio and two French residents, Baptiste Andre and Omar Faiad.
But the opposite eight refused to signal the doc, claiming that Freedom Flotilla has been intercepted in worldwide waters and rejecting the affirmation of getting entered illegally.
These eight folks are actually held pending a brand new listening to earlier than an Israeli choose, who might order their expulsion within the subsequent few days.
Hassan’s parliamentary immunity ensures its freedom of expression and protects it from authorized motion deriving from any EU Member State, however doesn’t apply outdoors the EU territory.
The MEP group denounced the doc introduced as “a propaganda operation geared toward legitimizing unlawful arrest and possession” and said that it’s “a transparent violation of its parliamentary immunity”.
“We strongly say that their humanitarian mission to Gaza was authorized, needed and pressing; the arrest violates worldwide regulation; detention is unlawful and arbitrary”, the declaration of the Hassan group additionally reads.
Tuesday the European Parliament informed Euronews that its president Roberta Metsola was in fixed contact with the Israeli authorities to ensure Hassan’s safety.
“We will stay in touch for twenty-four hours a day with all of the elements till it’s resolved safely,” stated a spokesman for Parliament.
Have different deputies ever been arrested?
This shouldn’t be the primary time that an Mep has been arrested in a 3rd nation.
In February 2025, three deputies – Isabel Serra (Spain), Catarina Martins (Portugal), Jussi Saramo (Finland), all from the left group – had been detained and subsequently expelled from El Aaiún, the primary metropolis of the contested territory of the western Sahara, the place they’d gone to hold out a mission of remark of human rights.
“The European Parliament will all the time insist on the truth that all its members are stored secure and handled with respect as elected representatives of the folks of Europe wherever they’re on this planet,” Parliament additionally stated in its declaration to Euronews.
His detention and the seizure of Freedom Flotilla have change into a really debated political query in France and Brussels.
France has not revealed a appeal asking for the fast launch of the passengers and the revocation of the Israeli block on Gaza.
His leaders Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the deputy Manon Aubry additionally requested for pressing intervention by President Macron and the European and worldwide our bodies, declaring that he has an ethical accountability to defend these activists. An occasion that organized in Paris on Monday to protest in opposition to the detention and actions of Israel in Gaza have collected tens of hundreds of individuals, in response to Mélenchon.
In the European Parliament, the left, the socialists and the Democrats and the free and European alliance have co-found a declaration asking that each one activists are issued.
