François Zimeray

François Zimeray is a lawyer, former politician, human rights activist and diplomat.

Born on 4 July 1961, he was a Member of the European Parliament for the Party of European Socialists from 1999 to 2004.

He has been the first non-career diplomat to hold this position since its creation in 2000 and has also had the longest assignment so far.

Zimeray has worked with five different Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Secretary of State: Bernard Kouchner, Michèle Alliot-Marie, Alain Juppé, Rama Yade and Laurent Fabius, then President of the COP21.

Former mayor of Petit-Quevilly, he served as President of the Greater Rouen - Normandy area from 2001 to 2008.

He was appointed on 13 February 2008 as French Ambassador-at-large for Human Rights by Nicolas Sarkozy and Bernard Kouchner.

As France's Ambassador-at-large for Human Rights since February 2008, Zimeray has held a fundamental yet discreet role aiming at spreading the culture of human rights into the French diplomacy.

He was chosen to present France's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the Human Rights Council in 2008 and 2012, as well as to represent France to the Alliance of Civilizations and Durban II Conference.

Since then, near to 100 diplomatic missions have led him to the Syrian border, Chechnya, Colombia, Gaza, Israel, Sri Lanka camps, Turkmenistan, Burma, Moscow, Thailand, Baghdad, Jordan, Lebanon, Kirghizstan, Uganda, Chad, Burundi, Congo, Rwanda, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Nepal, among others.

As Ambassador in charge of the Holocaust issues, Zimeray launched different initiatives to raise awareness about contemporary antisemitism: he went to Auschwitz several times and supports important projects enhancing dialogue between cultures, such as the Aladdin Project, which had been presented in Baghad in February 2010.

In October 2011, he went to Tripoli just a few days after the death of former leader Muammar Gaddafi.

In November 2011, he was one of the first diplomats to be received in Rangoon by the Lady Aung San Suu Kyi, one month before the official visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In January 2011, he went to Yuriy Lutsenko's trial, in Kiev.

In November 2012, he managed to visit Lydienne Yen-Eyoum in prison, a French-Cameroonian lawyer arbitrarily detained in Cameroon since July 9, 2011.

In January and April 2012, François Zimeray went twice to Kharkov prison, attempting to visit former Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko.

Although he was not allowed to enter the prison and see her, he attended the opening session of her second trial and denounced "accusations obviously politically grounded".

Zimeray represented the French diplomacy by attending several trials.

He went to Moscow for Mikhail Khodorkovsky's trial, to Kazakhstan to support the human rights defender Yevgeny Zhovtis.

Zimeray served as the French Ambassador to Denmark from 2013 to 2018.

In May 2013, he also visited Bangladesh after the 2013 Dhaka garment factory collapse to meet the families of the victims at the ENAM hospital in Savar, and express France's solidarity.

In Dhaka, he then met with the authorities and all stakeholders contributing to the improvement of Labor Rights and conditions in Bangladesh and pointed out the human rights issues raised by the factory collapse.

In accordance with EU Guidelines on Human Rights Defenders, François Zimeray set the following goal: "Each French embassy has to become a 'House of Human rights'."

On October 8, 2013, François Zimeray presented his credentials to the Queen of Denmark.

He nearly lost his life in the 2015 Copenhagen shootings, Islamist terror attack on February 14, 2015, where he was targeted together with other activists.

On February 14, 2015, following the Paris terrorist attacks, Zimeray was invited to give the keynote speech at Krudttønden in Copenhagen, a debate on freedom of expression and blasphemy, featuring Lars Vilks and Femen leader Inna Chevtchenko, when it was attacked by a masked gunman.

She was released from prison in 2016, after her arrest and detention were found to be arbitrary by the United Nations.

In September 2018, on his return from Denmark, he established together with Jessica Finelle the law firm Zimeray & Finelle.

At the same time, he joins with Prince Zeid and Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize, a team of lawyers very committed to the defense of fundamental rights in the London firm Doughty Street Chambers.

In November 2018, the Internal Political Committee of the National Assembly of Venezuela chaired by Juan Guaidó, designates François Zimeray to advise and assist him in the international courts and institutions regard to the serious violations of human rights committed in the country.

In December 2018, he defended the interests of Saif ul Malook, Asia Bibi's lawyer, a Pakistani Christian sentenced to death for blasphemy and acquitted at the end of October after having spent nine years in prison.

In February 2019 he launched an appeal to the European heads of state to ask them to give Saif ul Malook "the protection and the status that his heroism calls".

With the support of Lawyers Without Borders, SOS Eastern Christians and Bars, he calls on European leaders to allow Saif Al Malook to reside and work freely in Europe.

As a French lawyer mandated by the NGO European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR) he defended Rahaf Mohammed in 2019 in Bangkok against deportation back to Saudi Arabia.

Rahaf Mohammed, who fled in Bangkok, had intended to claim asylum in Australia and escape her family who she says abused her and threatened to kill her for amongst other reasons leaving Islaman act that is also a capital offence under Saudi law.

In April 2019, together with Matthias Fekl and Jessica Finelle, he seized the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Freedom of Expression of the United Nations to denounce the fate of the Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany prosecuted in a military court and banned from published for 5 years in Egypt.

The same year, he became one of the two French lawyers defending Carlos Ghosn during his incarceration in Japan.

At the request of the family, they both seized the UN to denounce a detention that he considers as "medieval".

In 2020, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that the detention of Carlos Ghosn in Japan was arbitrary and in violation of human rights.

He also became involved in the defense of a rape and sequestration victim in Switzerland allegedly committed by a Swiss theologist.

In 2021, he obtained the release of Fabien Azoulay, a 43-year-old French-American entrepreneur who was arrested during a trip to Turkey and sentenced to 20 years in prison for ordering rim cleaner online, unaware that the product had recently been banned in that country.