PARIS: British-Palestinian doctor and Glasgow university rector Ghassan Abu-Sittah said on Saturday he was denied access to France where he was to report on the medical situation in Gaza.

Abu-Sittah said on X, formerly Twitter, that he had been invited to give an account to French senators of his experience as a doctor in Gaza since the Israeli offensive there, but had been blocked at Paris’s Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle airport.

He had already been stopped from entering Germany last month where he had hoped to attend a “Palestinian Congress” along with former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who was also denied access.

“I am at Charles De Gaulle airport. They are preventing me from entering France,” Abu-Sittah said on X. “I am supposed to speak at the French Senate today. They say the Germans put a 1 year ban on my entry to Europe.”

A French police source confirmed that France could not allow the doctor entry because it was bound by a German-issued ban on his entry into the visa-free Schengen zone of which both countries are members.

Last month, Abu-Sittah reported that he had been banned from Germany “for the month of April”, and accused the authorities there of stifling freedom of expression.

Published in Dawn, May 5th, 2024