French foreign minister faces criminal complaint over misquoting Francesca Albanese
Sid Shniad
Middle East Eye 13 February 2026
French foreign minister faces criminal complaint over misquoting Francesca Albanese
Lawyers group accuses Jean-Noel Barrot of spreading false information and exposing UN expert to risk of attacks after citing comments she did not make.
Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian
A French group of international lawyers has filed a report with the Paris public prosecutor accusing the country's top diplomat of disseminating false information about the United Nations' special rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese.
The Association of Lawyers for the Respect of International Law (Jurdi) said on Thursday that it had taken legal action following comments by France's foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, who called for Albanese's resignation earlier this week based on a misquoted version of her speech in Doha on 7 February.
Barrot had been responding to a question from Renaissance MP Caroline Yadan, who had previously wrongly accused Albanese of describing Israel as the "common enemy of humanity" during a virtual speech at the Al Jazeera Forum in the Qatari capital.
The UN expert has used the phrase "common enemy" twice in Doha speeches in February and December in the context of criticising the political, military and economic forces that have enabled and sustained Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.
"We now see that we as a humanity have a common enemy and the respect of fundamental freedoms is the last peaceful avenue, the last peaceful toolbox that we have to regain our freedom," Albanese said in remarks delivered remotely at the Al Jazeera Forum on 7 February.
In an earlier speech in the Doha Forum in December, she said: "Palestine is allowing us to see what the law becomes when it's in the hands of power. Palestine is allowing us to see what connects all injustices; what happens to Yemen, to Sudan, to Congo, and including in places where poverty has not been so rooted as it is today for a long time, including in the West. We have a common enemy and we need to face it, where the politics is at the service of economic interests."
Jurdi said the minister’s remarks before the National Assembly on 11 February raised concerns about the "dissemination of manifestly inaccurate information by public authorities".
Addressing parliament, Barrot said France "unequivocally condemns the outrageous and reprehensible remarks" of Albanese, which he claimed targeted "not the Israeli government… but Israel as a people and as a nation".
He described her as a "political activist who stirs up hate speech" and announced that France would seek her resignation at the upcoming session of the UN Human Rights Council next week.
'Three European governments accuse me - based on statements I never made - with a virulence and conviction that they have NEVER used against those who have slaughtered 20,000+ children in 858 days'
- Francesca Albanese
Jurdi disputes that characterisation. In its statement, the organisation said a review of Albanese's full remarks shows that she "never designated Israel as a common enemy of humanity", and that the phrase instead referred to "a system in which politics serves economic interests".
Jurdi added that the comments formed part of a broader legal and structural analysis of alleged violations of international law in Gaza and were made squarely within the scope of her UN mandate.
Albanese also faced calls for resignations over the past week by the German and Italian foreign ministers over the same remarks.
"Three European governments accuse me - based on statements I never made - with a virulence and conviction that they have NEVER used against those who have slaughtered 20,000+ children in 858 days," Albanese wrote on X, referring to the Israeli army's killing of Palestinian children in Gaza since October 2023.
'Clear misrepresentation'
Jurdi noted that partial excerpts of Albanese's intervention were circulated on social media by the pro-Israel group UN Watch in a "truncated form" that did not reflect the full context of her remarks.
These excerpts were subsequently relayed by public figures, including Yadan, contributing to what Jurdi described as a "distorted interpretation".
"By publicly portraying these statements as hate speech or as targeting 'Israel as a people and as a nation', the minister for Europe and foreign affairs engaged in a clear misrepresentation of their content," Jurdi said.
"Such characterisation, coming from a public authority and expressed in an institutional setting, may constitute the dissemination of false information, insofar as it attributes to a UN expert statements she neither made nor endorsed."
Under French law, the dissemination of false information in bad faith that is likely to disturb public order can constitute a criminal offence. Jurdi told prosecutors that falsely attributing statements to a UN mandate holder may fall within that framework.
Furthermore, Jurdi added that, under international law, UN special rapporteurs are required to exercise their functions independently and are protected for statements made in the course of their duties.
A public call by a member state for the resignation of a mandate holder, it said, amounts to political pressure incompatible with that independence
Jurdi also warned that publicly labelling Albanese's remarks as hate speech and antisemitic could expose her to "heightened risks of attacks, threats and pressure", endangering her personal security as an independent expert.
As part of her mandate, Albanese has issued three reports since October 2023 labelling Israel's war on Gaza as a genocide and denouncing the global economic and political systems that have supported Israel's war.
In an interview with Middle East Eye's Expert Witness podcast in November, where Albanese discussed the findings of her latest report Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime, she accused 63 states of enabling Israeli breaches of international law.
She said that despite overwhelming evidence of genocide and mass atrocities in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, Europe's most powerful states, including Italy, Germany and France, continue to provide diplomatic, military and political cover for Israel.
Albanese was sanctioned in July by the administration of US President Donald Trump in connection with her work investigating genocide in Gaza. The sanctions effectively barred her from travelling to the US and froze her assets there.
She told MEE that the sanctions have also cut her off from the global financial system, including by blocking her ability to carry out regular daily transactions.