Saint-Denis, city of French kings, honours a convicted terrorist

There is a bitter irony in the choice of Saint-Denis as the city to award honorary citizenship to Marwan Barghouti. 

For this is no ordinary French municipality. Saint-Denis is the ancient burial place of the kings of France, home to the magnificent Gothic Basilica where the monarchs of the French nation have rested for over a thousand years, from Dagobert I to Louis XVIII. Clovis, Charles Martel, Hugues Capet, Saint Louis, Henri IV, the builders of France lie in its crypt.

Today, its mayor awards honorary citizenship to a man serving five consecutive life sentences for murder.

Let us be precise about who Bally Bagayoko, the Mayor, has just honoured on behalf of the citizens of this municipality.

Barghouti is the co-founder of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a designated terrorist organisation responsible for dozens of suicide bombings and shooting attacks against Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada between 2000 and 2005. Israeli security services considered him the "chief of staff of the Intifada », the operational commander of a terrorist campaign that killed over 1,000 Israelis.

In May 2004, following a lengthy trial before the Tel Aviv District Court, Barghouti was convicted on five counts of murder for directing specific terrorist attacks. 

He is currently serving five life sentences plus 40 years. Among the attacks for which he was convicted: the March 2002 Seafood Market massacre in Tel Aviv, in which a gunman he directed opened fire on diners and threw grenades at people fleeing for their lives, killing three civilians and a Druze police officer.

This is the man the mayor of Saint-Denis calls "the hope of a people."

Saint-Denis is home to a large North African immigrant community, and Bagayoko, a member of Jean-Luc Mélenchon's La France Insoumise (LFI), knows exactly what he is doing. This is not a humanitarian gesture. It is a calculated play for votes, wrapped in the language of solidarity and human rights to disguise what it actually is: the glorification of a convicted murderer for political gain.

It is the same playbook Mélenchon himself has been running for years, questioning whether the October 7 massacres constituted terrorism, attending rallies in support of activists who celebrated Hamas, systematically refusing to call designated terrorist organisations by their name. Bagayoko is simply the latest, most brazen product of that political culture.

Mayor Bagayoko declared that Barghouti "represents the hope of a people and is a figure for the plight of Palestinian political prisoners mistreated and tortured in Israeli jails."

A counter-education is clearly needed. Barghouti is not a political prisoner. He is a convicted murderer who was tried, presented with evidence and found guilty by an independent court of law. The families of Salim Barakat, Yosef Haybi, Eli Dahan and the other victims killed in attacks he directed might have something to say about whether their loved ones' killer represents "hope."

The Kings Are Turning in Their Graves

The Basilica of Saint-Denis was built to honour the greatness of France, its history, its civilisation, its kings. Today, in the shadow of that same basilica, a mayor from the hard left has decided that the city's highest honour belongs to a man convicted of orchestrating mass murder.

What does it say about France that this is possible, that a sitting mayor can award honorary citizenship to a terrorist and face no serious consequences, no outrage from national institutions, no meaningful pushback from the political mainstream?

It says that the normalisation of antisemitism and the glorification of terrorism have advanced further in France than many are prepared to acknowledge. And that the hard left, having failed to win power through the ballot box, has decided to win it through community politics, identity mobilisation and the systematic demonisation of Israel.

The kings of France are buried in Saint-Denis. Their city has just honoured a convicted killer. One thousand years of French history deserve better than this.