Question 11785 — foreign policy

Summary

Mr. Frédéric-Pierre Vos draws the attention of the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs to the alarming situation of Mr. Tayeb Benabderrahmane, a French citizen victim of arbitrary detention, torture, judicial falsification and sentenced to death in absentia in Qatar following a secret trial. On 27 November 2025, in her response to written question E-004112/2025, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs officially recognized the seriousness of this matter. She confirmed that the European Union fully shared the conclusions of Opinion No. 28/2025 of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (GTDA), which established that Mr. Benabderrahmane was arbitrarily detained, tortured and deprived of his right to a fair trial. The Union also indicated that it regularly urges Qatar to implement these recommendations. Yet, despite these unequivocal conclusions and the expiration of the six-month deadline set by the GTDA for the implementation of its recommendations, no tangible measures have been taken by Qatar to annul the death sentence, compensate the victim or prosecute those responsible. Even more worrying, no visible action has been taken by the French authorities to ensure the diplomatic protection of this French national, despite repeated alerts from the press, several parliamentarians and independent organizations since 2020. This silence painfully contrasts with the humanist values ​​that France proclaims on the international scene, particularly in its fight for the universal abolition of the death penalty. France, which recently paid tribute to Robert Badinter by carrying his memory to the Pantheon, cannot be content with celebrating the words of righteous without prolonging their work. As the President of the Republic recalled: “The dead listen to us”. If he hears us, Robert Badinter would not fail to question France's loyalty to the ideal he defended: that of a State for which human dignity is never negotiated. Leaving a French citizen exposed to an arbitrary execution, pronounced following a secret and illegal trial, would constitute a moral fault and major policy. Such a renunciation would seriously weaken France's international credibility on the eve of the 9th World Congress against the death penalty, which Paris will host from June 30 to July 3, 2026. It would be incomprehensible for France to chair such an event in the name of human rights while remaining silent on the fate of one of its citizens, recognized as tortured by the United Nations. Furthermore, ongoing negotiations between the European Union and Qatar for a strategic partnership agreement constitute an essential diplomatic lever. The official position of the Union now makes compliance with the GTDA recommendations a test of credibility of the future EU-Qatar partnership. He asks him how France justifies not having taken any public position or taken any visible action in the affair of Mr. Benabderrahmane, while the European Union has adopted a clear and demanding official position; why France did not request, like the European Union, the immediate implementation of opinion no. 28/2025 of the GTDA, when the six-month deadline set by the UN has expired; whether France will support, as part of the EU-Qatar strategic partnership negotiations, an explicit condition linking any progress in the partnership to compliance with the GTDA recommendations in the case of Mr. Benabderrahmane; finally, how France can defend the universal cause of the abolition of the death penalty - in particular by hosting the 9th World Congress against the death penalty - while remaining silent on a French citizen tortured and sentenced to death abroad.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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