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.
Abu Daqqa slammed her expulsion on a phone interview with AFP, 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.
The Moroccan Democratic Network for Solidarity with Peoples condemned the arrest of the Palestinian activist and the former prisoner and leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The Moroccan Democratic Network for Solidarity with Peoples announced, in a statement “the arbitrary and aggressive measures taken by the French authorities against Abu Daqqa, and placing her under house arrest awaiting her expulsion.”
The network considered the measures “part of the restrictive, reactionary and imperialist practices directed against activists of the Palestinian people by various governments that are subject to Zionist-American dictates.”
The National Secretariat of the Moroccan Front for Supporting Palestine and Against Normalization called for a protest in front of the French Embassy in Rabat on Friday, to “denounce the corrupt decision of the French state, and demand its retraction of the arrest of the Palestinian activist.”
The Front demanded in a statement that Abu Daqqa be allowed to move and travel to the destination of her choice, express her opinions and defend the rights of the Palestinian people.