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The Refugee Platform in Egypt expresses our grave concern over the measures French authorities have taken by announcing their intention to deport Palestinian-Egyptian activist Rami Shaath, in a decision that reflects a disturbing escalation in policies aimed at restricting freedom of expression in Europe while criminalizing solidarity with Palestinian national liberation and Palestinian people.
In January 2022, Rami Shaath arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris after spending more than 900 days in pretrial detention in Egypt on politically motivated charges, before being released and after being forced to renounce his Egyptian citizenship. Today, less than four years later, Shaath faces the threat of deportation from France on the grounds that Rami poses a ‘serious threat to public order’. This development is one of many that repeatedly and consistently exposes the disingenuity of Europe’s professed commitment to protecting human rights defenders; safeguarding freedom of expression; and maintaining the integrity of civic spaces.
Rami Shaath, a Palestinian-Egyptian activist and one of the founders of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement in Egypt, has done nothing more than exercise his legitimate right to peacefully express his political views while calling for legal and economic accountability to end the illegal, Jewish occupation of Palestine. Rami resumed his activism in France; and was among the voices there calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and a halt to arms exports. All of these demands are and remain consistent with international humanitarian law.
In July 2019, Shaath was arrested in Egypt on charges of ‘assisting a terrorist group in achieving its objectives’, the same vague charge that Egyptian authorities have long since used to target any dissenting voices or human rights activists. In April 2020, Rami’s name was added to domestic terrorism lists, which are a primary tool used to persecute Egyptian dissidents. During Rami’s three years in detention, his French wife, Celine Libron Shaath, led a relentless campaign from Paris demanding his release as Egyptian authorities deported her shortly after Rami’s arrest.
In January 2022, Rami was finally released but Egyptian authorities made his release conditional upon his prior renunciation of his Egyptian citizenship, in order to force him to remain outside of Egypt.
Shaath has since settled in France and resumed his human rights and political activism. He founded, alongside other co-founders, the organization ‘Urgence Palestine’ following October 7th, 2023 in response to the subsequent genocide in Gaza. In November 2023, Rami participated in a demonstration in Paris, where he called for an immediate ceasefire and demanded sanctions and a ban on arms exports to the Jewish occupation state. Following that demonstration, Rami was investigated on charges of ‘promoting terrorism’, however the French public prosecutor’s office dismissed the case in October 2024 due to lack of evidence.
It later became evident that any formal charges would differ from the charges that were the foundation of the criminal investigation. In May 2026, the Nanterre municipality notified Shaath of its intention to initiate deportation proceedings against him, citing what the municipality described as Rami’s ties to ‘figures involved with the Palestinian movement in France’ as well as Rami’s participation in founding solidarity organizations. Rami is scheduled to appear before the deportation committee on May 21st, 2026, with a possible forced deportation decision being made against him to be issued and enforced immediately following the hearing date.
Rami Shaath’s case cannot be viewed as an isolated or individual incident; but rather a link in a chain of human rights violations across European countries that reveals a systemic approach to criminalizing solidarity with Palestinian national liberation and Palestinian people. All while European governments frame activists’ demonstrations as security threats after ignoring activists’ legitimate demands, and failing continuously to meet those demands through reason and rule of law. In Italy, RPEGY and partner organizations documented the case of Sheikh Muhammad Shaheen, an Egyptian citizen who spent nearly twenty years in Turin, where Sheikh Muhammad Shaheen was known as an imam and mediator in interfaith dialogue initiatives.
In November 2025, the Italian Interior Ministry revoked Sheikh Muhammad Shaheen’s long-term European residence permit, citing Shaheen’s participation in a solidarity demonstration for Palestine in May 2025. Shaheen was then transferred to the Center for Detention and Deportation (CPR) in Caltanissetta, far from his family, community, and lawyer, where Shaheen’s application for international protection was rejected in a review that human rights organizations described as “suspiciously rushed”. This rush took place despite Italy’s classification of Egypt, Shaheen’s country of origin, as a ‘safe country of origin’, and before the Italian judiciary decided to revoke Shaheen’s administrative detention. Moreover, this designation wilfully ignores Egypt’s widely documented record of systemic torture and arbitrary detention.
The common thread linking Shaheen and Shaath’s cases is participation in protest and expression of solidarity regarding political views on behalf of a people subjected to ethnic cleansing, as documented incessantly throughout United Nations reports. These threads were twisted into a legal pretext for persecution where, in both cases, the rhetoric of ‘national security’ and ‘societal danger’ was rehashed.
The French authorities’ intention to deport activist Rami Shaath illustrates another instance in a troubling pattern of restricting civil society in Europe through national security and political pretenses. Rami Shaath is a prominent voice in civil society for the defense of Palestinian national liberation, Palestinian rights, as well as Palestinian self-determination, and Rami’s potential forced deportation raises pertinent questions regarding France’s commitment, as a democratic nation-state, to protecting freedom of expression and political activism. Furthermore, the implementation of legal and bureaucratic tools, specifically revoking a residence permit as well as forced deportation, against non-European activists, thereby targeting them for their political stances, sets a dangerous precedent. In Shaath’s case, this constitutes a repeat violation of Rami’s rights, akin to what Egyptian authorities did by imprisoning him and taking away Rami’s right to Egyptian citizenship, albeit more disturbing given that the European side fervently claims to provide protection for human rights as well as human rights defenders. And yet, the European case restricts and subjugates them.
These administrative decisions cannot be separated from the broader climate of restrictions on freedoms throughout Europe, nor can the subjugation of voices critical of the Jewish occupation state’s policies as previously seen with Sheikh Muhammad Shaheen in Italy. Protecting activists is not merely a matter of solidarity, but a seminal test of the credibility of states that claim to defend democratic values and human rights.
RPEGY stands in solidarity with Rami Shaath, we declare our unconditional support for his civil demonstrations and demand that the French authorities execute the following:
- Immediately halt deportation proceedings and reverse the decision by the Nanterre municipality.
- Recognize that Rami Shaath’s activities fall within the guaranteed right to freedom of expression and civil assembly in accordance with international and European human rights conventions.
- Refrain from weaponizing national security laws against expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian national liberation movement as well as the Palestinian people, a practice that in and of itself constitutes a violation of the civil liberties and rights that France espouses in name and in principle.
