The prominent pro-Palestinian activist accused the “pro-Israeli lobby” in France of targeting her for her opinions.
PARIS — French MEP Rima Hassan fired back Friday against reports she was found possessing drugs when she was placed under police custody on suspicion of “apology for terrorism.”
“All the reports that refer to the possession of drugs are false and have been relayed on purpose. The only goal is to harm me,” she wrote in a social media post online.
Hassan, a prominent pro-Palestinian activist who has repeatedly courted controversy over her stance on Israel, said that she was carrying legally purchased cannabidiol (CBD) “for medical use” when she was temporarily detained by police on Thursday.
She was again questioned by the police on Friday morning as part of an investigation into a social media post she wrote last week expressing solidarity with Japanese terrorist Kōzō Okamoto.
Okamoto was convicted of a terrorist attack that killed 26 people at Ben Gurion International Airport in 1972.
In her post on Friday, Hassan, who is an MEP with the hard-left France Unbowed party, said she had two types of CBD, a chemical that is found in the cannabis plant but does not have the same intoxicating effects as THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. The first type complied with legal norms, but the second, she wrote, contained “traces of synthetic drugs,” according to investigators.
“I told them where I had legally bought this CBD. Simple checks are ongoing into the origin of the CBD,” Hassan added.
Hassan also criticized the probe into her now-deleted post on X, accusing the “pro-Israeli lobby in France” of targeting her “political opinions on the genocide in Gaza and Palestine.”
She said that 13 out of 16 cases against her had been dropped. Hassan’s team also argued that the temporary custody was a breach of the lawmaker’s immunity as an MEP.
However, the Paris prosecutor’s office said Friday that while Hassan has been cleared in 13 cases, she still faces nine separate investigations against her. The prosecutors added that police looking into flagrant offenses can put MEPs into police custody without going through the procedure of lifting their parliamentary immunity.