French-Palestinian MEP Faces Terror Apology Charges Over Post Quoting Japanese Red Army Member

French authorities arrested Rima Hassan, a 33-year-old French-Palestinian member of the European Parliament, in Paris on Thursday over an X post quoting a man convicted of massacring 26 people at an Israeli airport in 1972. The Paris prosecutor's office announced she will stand trial on July 7 on charges of "advocating terrorism committed online," an offense under France's apologie du terrorisme statute that carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison and a fine up to 100,000 euros ($115,290).

The post, published March 26, shared an article about Kōzō Okamoto, the sole surviving perpetrator of the 1972 Lod Airport massacre, quoting him: "I gave my youth to the Palestinian cause. As long as there is oppression, resistance is not only a right, it is a duty." French law does not require explicit endorsement of a terrorist act; prosecutors can pursue charges when a statement presents terrorism in a favorable light, including in an online context.

The attack Okamoto carried out alongside two other Japanese Red Army members, Tsuyoshi Okudaira and Yasuyuki Yasuda, in coordination with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, killed 26 people at Lod Airport on May 30, 1972. Victims included 17 Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico, a Canadian citizen, and eight Israelis, among them Aharon Katzir, a renowned protein biophysicist and Israeli Prize laureate. Eighty more were wounded. Okamoto was captured, tried, and sentenced to life in prison; his two comrades died during the attack.

Three separate complaints triggered the arrest. The International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) and the European Jewish Organization both filed formal complaints, as did far-right National Rally MP Matthias Renault, who separately wrote to the Paris public prosecutor citing the post.

The case poses a sharper-than-usual question about parliamentary speech because Hassan holds a seat in the European Parliament. France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon challenged the detention on X, writing: "The politics police has once again put Rima Hassan in custody in relation to a re-tweet from March. So there is no parliamentary immunity in France. Unbearable." European Parliament members carry immunity protections under EU law, but French domestic courts retain authority to pursue charges arising from speech made in a personal capacity outside parliamentary proceedings.

This was at least the third major legal or political confrontation tied to Hassan's activism. A separate complaint was filed in December 2024 after she suggested that French-Palestinians should be free to join Palestinian armed resistance if French-Israelis are permitted to serve in the IDF. Israeli authorities barred her entry at Ben-Gurion Airport in February 2025 when she arrived as part of an EU delegation from Brussels, and in October 2025 she participated in a Gaza Freedom Flotilla mission intercepted by Israeli forces. French authorities also reported finding several grams of an unidentified synthetic substance in her bag at the time of Thursday's arrest.

Hassan was born stateless in the Neirab refugee camp near Aleppo, Syria, and arrived in France around age nine. Elected to the European Parliament in 2024 on the France Unbowed ticket, she has become one of France's most prominent critics of Israeli policy. Supporters characterized her detention as "a new stage in the judicial harassment aimed at silencing voices that defend the rights of the Palestinian people"; LICRA and the European Jewish Organization maintain the post constituted an illegal glorification of a designated terrorist attack.

The July 7 trial will compel a Paris criminal court to draw a line European courts have rarely been pressed to define with such precision: whether an elected legislator's act of quoting a convicted mass murderer, without explicit endorsement, crosses from protected political speech into criminal apologia.