This is the photo that keeps popping up in the mentions of Les Insoumis. When Manon Aubry was outraged by Benyamin Netanhayou’s interview on LCI, an Internet user responded by posting this image of Jean-Luc Mélenchon walking alongside Bashar Al-Assad. Other Internet users post it in response to tweets from Rima Hassan, activist for Palestine and seventh on the LFI list in the European elections.
A way for them to denounce a supposed proximity between the rebellious leader and the Syrian dictator.
FAKE OFF
Far from demonstrating any closeness or sympathy between the two men, this photo illustrates a protocol obligation that Jean-Luc Mélenchon had to fulfill in 2001. While he was Minister Delegate in charge of Vocational Education in the cohabitation government of Lionel Jospin, Jean-Luc Mélenchon accompanied Bashar Al-Assad to Orly airport on June 27, 2001, at the end of the Syrian president’s state visit to France, indicates to 20 minutes Ammar Abd Rabbo, the photographer who took this image. At the time the two men are photographed, they are reviewing soldiers of the Republican Guard.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon was fulfilling an obligation as a member of the government; he was not at the origin of this visit by the Syrian dictator to France. This is also what confirmed in 2012 at Parisian Arnauld Champremier-Trigano, then head of communications for Jean-Luc Mélenchon: “Matignon called him [Jean-Luc Mélenchon] at the last minute, to ask him to go to Orly. But apart from when he got off the plane, Jean-Luc Mélenchon did not meet [Bachar Al-Assad]. He did not have dinner with him and there was no meeting on educational matters. The meetings were planned with Jacques Chirac, Lionel Jospin as well as Raymond Forni, the President of the Assembly at the time. »
An official visit that had been criticized
At the time, this official visit had been criticized. Demonstrations took place and an official reception was disrupted, reminded France 2.
In 2001, it was rather these elements that the media and the general public had highlighted, and not the image of Jean-Luc Mélenchon alongside Bashar Al-Assad. “What the magazines picked up at the time was the state visit, the visit to Paris City Hall [qui avait été perturbée] and one of the first official appearances of Asma Al-Assad, the young wife of Bashar Al-Assad,” remembers Ammar Abd Rabbo.
The photo is talked about eleven years later
It was only eleven years later, in 2012, when Jean-Luc Mélenchon was a presidential candidate for the Left Front, that this photo with the Syrian president made headlines. Ammar Abd Rabbo posted it on his Twitter account (since renamed X) on April 17, four days before the first round, with this caption: “there are photos that we would really like to forget. »
“I brought it out because Jean-Luc Mélenchon presented himself as outside the system,” confides Ammar Abd Rabbo. It amused me to show that he is a politician. » Quickly, Twitter went wild and the photo went viral. The photographer is targeted with insults. “I was told that it was a remote-controlled operation by Hollande [alors lui aussi candidat à la présidentielle] or that I was part of a black cabinet! »
A complaint from Jean-Luc Mélenchon
On the eve of the first round of the presidential election, a few hours before the end of the official campaign, the cliché is found in the columns of the daily newspaper Metro to illustrate an article on candidate Mélenchon. In the caption, the context is not recalled, arousing anger in the candidate’s camp, who announces that he wants to file a complaint against the newspaper.
Twelve years later, and twenty-three years after being taken, this photo continues, like digital chewing gum, to stick to the leader of LFI and those close to him, brandished by opponents who do not always bother to give its context.