A society reception in Paris, a speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg and a press conference in Brussels. Anxious to forge a reputation on the diplomatic scene, the businessman Siddiq Haftar, eldest son of Libyan military strongman Marshal Khalifa Haftar, who is the object of several investigations for war crimes and whose government is not recognised by the international community, dreamt of conducting his first tour of European leaders in mid-September.
But nothing ended up going quite to plan for a man who has ambitions one day to stand for the presidency in Libya. His trip to France and Belgium turned into a fiasco of false promises to cancelled meetings, thanks to a dubious schedule arranged by an improbable pair of organisers. One of them was Hassen Chalghoumi, an imam from Drancy in the north-east suburbs of Paris, a star of the French media and someone with access to the Élysée. The other was European Member of Parliament (MEP) Maxette Pirbakas, a former member of the far-right Rassemblement National who defected to the ranks of rival far-right candidate Éric Zemmour during the 2022 presidential election. The MEP, who represents the French overseas département of Guadalupe, then left Zemmour's Reconquête party after his electoral flop.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Having arrived in Paris on September 10th, Siddiq Haftar was first of all invited to attend the Rosh Hashanah or Jewish New Year celebrations being held at the home of Marek Halter, a friend of Hassen Chalghoumi. Here he was photographed with several personalities, including the Russian ambassador in France, Alexei Mechkov, and the writer Rachel Khan, who is close to the current French government and to the Printemps Républicain secular movement. “I don't know who this gentleman is, I had never met him before, I don't even know why he was there,” Rachel Khan told Mediapart.
The next day Siddiq Haftar headed for Strasbourg to take part in – or so he thought – an official meeting at the European Parliament commemorating the anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attack in the United States. The Libyan businessman arrived at the Parliament in an official convoy with the imam of Drancy and the latter's impressive security detail (Hassen Chalghoumi has been under police protection for several years), where the MEP Maxette Pirbakas was waiting for him.
The consultant and expert on counter-terrorism, Jean-Charles Brisard, was also on the trip, thinking he was going to take part in a “conference”. But in the end that never took place. “There was this MEP, whom I didn't know from Adam or Eve [editor's note, Maxette Pirbakas] and who announced to us as we arrived that 'It's going to be difficult because we don't have a room',” Jean-Charles Brisard told Mediapart. It was at this point that the delegation discovered that nothing had been planned and that the supposed event was in fact being completely improvised.
A furious Siddiq Haftar
MEP Maxette Pirbakas initially suggested moving the “conference” to the lobby of an hotel opposite the Parliament, a solution rejected by the participants. “We then wandered the corridors of the Parliament, first of all in that part of the hemicycle that's open to the public, then searching for an available room that we never found. It was chaos, we had no idea what was gong on, who was doing what,” recalled Jean-Charles Brisard.
In the end the far-right MEP managed to negotiate access to a television studio, explaining to Siddiq Haftar that he could be filmed there in front of a camera, though no one knew where the images would be transmitted. The Libyan businessman then produced a laptop and in grave tones started to read a text in Arabic. Jean-Charles Brisard was sitting next to him at the time. “It was quite bizarre, I had the feeling that Haftar, who was furious over the lack of organisation, was there to deliver a message to the European Parliament, but I don't know who had led him to believe he could do so,” said the security consultant. Jean-Charles Brisard said that as Siddiq Haftar began his curious speech he himself had left his seat. “I had nothing to do with this matter. I felt useless and in a sense stitched up,” he said.
At the end of this phantom speech the Libyan businessman published a three-minute video, a political promo, on social media. It showed his welcome at the Parliament, and gave the illusion that he had appeared before some European institutions; it even showed images of the hemicycle itself. The voice-over that accompanied the video, which has since been deleted, invented a supposed “request received [by Siddiq Haftar] from the European Parliament in Strasbourg to take part in a meeting” on the “role of Islam” and on “values of solidarity”.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
Clearly unconcerned at the time by the background to this Potemkin visit, Jean-Charles Brisard, who pointed out that he was not paid for the event, said he only later discovered the profile of the MEP who greeted the delegation. “Why was an elected representative who had been under the banner of Rassemblement National, and who today has no affiliation and no institutional clout, involved in this set-up?” he wondered.
A response to this is unlikely to come from the MEP herself. Approached by Mediapart, Maxette Pirbakas was very evasive as to why she had provided the welcome for Siddiq Haftar, whom she incidentally referred to as “the gentleman” without mentioning his name. “He came to fight against terrorism,” explained the MEP when asked for the reasons for the Libyan's visit. But what else?
“The gentleman spoke about terrorism, modern slavery, his dad was a general I think,” said Maxette Pirbakas. What had stood out most of all for her was that the businessman had been accompanied by a “very well-known imam who's on TV”, a reference to Hassen Chalghoumi. “I don't know who the other gentleman [editor's note, Jean-Charles Brisard] is,” she continued, saying she had no more information about the organisation of the visit.
When approached, Hassen Chalghoumi also played down his role in Siddiq Haftar's visit. “I didn't organise the trip, I was invited for September 11th and I saw him [then],” he said. Yet the two men had travelled from Paris to Strasbourg. “Yes, we arrived together because I learnt from a person who knows him that he was going to come at the same time,” said the imam before bringing the conversation to an end. The cleric afterwards threatened Mediapart with legal action when we pursued the matter in writing and asked him if he had been paid for his involvement, which he denied.
Siddiq Haftar refuses to take part in Brussels press conference
More than a month later, no one now wants to acknowledge responsibility for Siddiq Haftar's tour of the European Parliament. Hassen Chalghoumi explained that he was at Strasbourg at the invitation of a Belgian association run by the lobbyist Lahcen Hammouch. Yet the latter told Mediapart that, on the contrary, “Mr Haftar was imam Chalghoumi's guest”.
The day after the fiasco in Strasbourg, Lahcen Hammouch organised a press conference, marking the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which took place at the Brussels Press Club. But once again the event ended in unfortunate circumstances. For while Siddiq Haftar was initially scheduled to take part in the press conference – once again, according to Lahcen Hammouch, at Hassen Chalghoumi's invitation – at the last minute the Libyan suddenly declined to participate. This forced organisers to hurriedly remove the chair and name card that had been put there for him, according to photos seen by Mediapart.
According to one witness, Siddiq Haftar had not appreciated discovering at the last minute that he would be sat at the press conference table with Rabbi Avi Tawil, director of the European Jewish Community Centre (EJCC). Indeed, just a few weeks earlier the Libyan foreign minister Najla al-Mangoush had been suspended from her duties for having met her Israeli counterpart.
As was the case with the visit to the European Parliament, other participants in the Brussels press conference were unaware of why Haftar had been scheduled to attend. “I was the main speaker, for the publication of a book that I've written on Islamism, and I didn't know that he was going to take part,” said writer Philippe Lienard, who did not hide his unhappiness. “Knowing what I have since read in the press, I wouldn't have been happy at all [if he had not declined to take part], it just isn't done,” he added.
The connections between Hassen Chalghoumi and Siddiq Haftar precede this strange attempt at a diplomatic tour of Europe. According to the specialist publication Africa Intelligence, in recent months the pair have increased their contacts with the Sudanese general Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti who - as with Marshal Haftar - has become a favourite among Western nations despite accusations of war crimes against him. The Haftar family, like Hemedti, have also been actively supported by the United Arab Emirates, to whom Hassen Chalghoumi is also supposedly close.
In April 2023 Siddiq Haftar met the Sudanese general while showcasing his nomination as honorary chairman of a Sudanese football club, to whom he said he had donated two million dollars. According to Africa Intelligence the two men also share the same communications specialist Anne Testus (who did not respond to Mediapart's request for comment), whose Libyan connections led to her having a role in the fake retraction by Ziad Takieddine, a key witness in the Nicolas Sarkozy-Libyan funding affair.
Africa Intelligence also reports that two months after Siddiq Haftar's trip to Sudan, imam Hassen Chalghoumi also went to see the Sudanese general Hermedti. This visit, however, took place in complete discretion.
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter