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
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.
"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."
"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.
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.
A public call by a member state for the resignation of a mandate holder, it said, amounts to political pressure incompatible with that independence
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.