France expels Palestinian activist to Egypt

Paris – France on Friday expelled a Palestinian activist to Egypt after a protracted court battle over her presence, police said.

Mariam Abu Daqqa, 72, is a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) which is considered a “terrorist” organisation by the European Union.

Abu Daqqa was detained by police on Wednesday night after the State Council, France’s highest administrative court, overturned a lower court ruling that had suspended an interior ministry expulsion order.

Abu Daqqa had a 50 day visa to visit France to take part in conferences on the Middle East conflict. The ministry said that her presence was a risk after the deadly October 7 Hamas attacks against Israel.

She took part in two conferences that had been banned while in France.

Reached by phone at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport as she awaited a flight to Cairo, Abu Daqqa slammed her expulsion as “an attack against the right of Palestine to have a state, an identity, an existence”.

“The process that I have undergone is not worthy of a democratic government,” she said. 

Her lawyers, Elsa Marcel and Marie David, told AFP they would launch further appeals and even take the case to the European Court of Human rights.

France, which has large Jewish and Muslim populations, has seen a spike in tensions amid the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.