François Zimeray

[2] 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 December 2018, he defended[3] 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[4] 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[9] 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.

Zimeray's commitment to human rights dates back to 1979, when, then aged 17, he founded an association to support and cater for Cambodian refugees in Paris.

François Zimeray went to Gaza twice and described the attitude of people defining themselves as exclusively in favour of one side against the other ("pro-palestinian" or "pro-Israel") as "intellectual hooliganism" (speech at the French National Assembly for "Kids creating Peace").

[15] He founded the Cercle Léon Blum and worked to promote dialogue between European leaders and Middle Eastern political and civil society representatives as Chairman of the Medbridge Strategy Center founded in Brussels with prominent European politicians such as Willy De Clercq, François Léotard, Emma Bonino and Ana Palacio.

He has represented victims in trials of Khmer Rouge leaders, successfully campaigned to free imprisoned political opponents in Laos, and defended a child soldier in Congo/Kinshasa before the International Criminal Court.

Although member of the socialist group, he did not hesitate to defend the parliamentarian immunities of Charles Pasqua (PPE) and Marco Pannella (PVE),[18] respectively in 2002 and 2003.

In 2001, he was elected President of the Greater Rouen-Normandy area (37 cities, 450,000 inhabitants) and launched several urban and cultural projects: the Palais des Sports (designed by Dominique Perrault), the renovation of the docks and public transportations (metro, cycle).

[22] In his book published after the Copenhagen terror attack he survived (February 14, 2015) he advocates against patriarchy : "But if, at the end of this journey, I had to choose just one cause that stands above all others, I now know that our determination to empower women to achieve their full potential – particularly by educating girls – will speak volumes about the future of humanity.