A renowned French-Lebanese trumpeter was apprehended as he travelled from France to play a gig in London this week after being told that his name had flagged an Interpol alert.
Ibrahim Maalouf was travelling through Paris’s central Gare du Nord station on Tuesday towards the UK to play in the London Jazz Festival.
Maalouf, whose blend of jazz trumpet and rock rhythms has won him international accolades and awards, told French music magazine Clique on Wednesday that he had been “menaced” by police.
“It came up on their computer that my passport was flagged up as “Interpol positive”. They took me aside and interrogated me,” Maalouf said.
Following his release, after missing two trains and having to cancel a day of promotional activities in London, Maalouf said he was pulled off a train by customs officers, who accused him of “defamation” for speaking to the press about the incident.
Maalouf, who was born in Beirut but fled the civil war with his family as a child, said the state of emergency declared in France in the wake of last Friday’s bloody attacks in Paris was behind his arrest.
“I think that, since the state of emergency was put into place, there are processes that go beyond the usual monitoring. I am just collateral damage of this.”
France’s parliament on Thursday voted to extend a state of emergency imposed countrywide a few hours after the attacks began for a further three months.
The country’s state of emergency was first formulated in 1955 as part of a response to the Algerian War of Independence, and allows security services to impose curfews, curtail freedom of assembly and censor the media.
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