France wants to expel Ramy Shaath for the ‘threat’ of supporting Palestine

Céline Lebrun Shaath: ‘After two and a half years of failed attempts at prosecution and relentless administrative harassment, the French government is escalating its crackdown on free Palestinian voices and their supporters, trying to make an example out of Ramy.’

France wants to deport Ramy Shaath. Released after spending 900 days in Egyptian prisons, he now faces deportation by Paris for refusing to stay silent. His case is no exception: it is the new norm in a Europe that invokes “public order” to criminalize anyone who speaks the truth in the face of a genocide.

In January 2022, Ramy Shaath landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport (Roissy) after nearly three years of pretrial detention in Egypt. French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed the news with a self-satisfied public statement, portraying the release as a triumph of French diplomacy. Today, those same authorities are trying to kick him out of the country. The new charge: being a “grave threat to public order.”

Ramy Shaath has not changed. What has changed is the calculus of those who used his release as a PR victory for a France that champions freedom, only to turn around and repress those exact same freedoms.

Shaath, 54, the son of Palestinian diplomat Nabil Shaath, was a prominent figure when he was arrested in Cairo in July 2019. He was known for his........

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