British-Palestinian doctor and Glasgow University rector Ghassan Abu-Sittah has said he was denied access to France, where he was to report on the medical situation in Gaza, AFP reports.
Abu-Sittah said on X that he had been invited to give an account to French senators of his experience as a doctor in Gaza during the Israeli offensive, but had been blocked at Paris’s Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle airport.
“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 to AFP 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.
The event that Abu-Sittah had been scheduled to attend was organised by Senator Raymonde Poncet Monge, a Green party member.
Guillaume Gontard, president of the Greens’ Senate group, called the decision to block Abu-Sittah “scandalous”, and said he was negotiating with the interior and foreign ministries to reverse the move.
He added however that the doctor would “probably” be sent back to Britain.