In a significant legal blow to one of the international community's most vehement anti-Israel voices, a US federal court has ruled that Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Palestinian Arabs, cannot evade a defamation lawsuit filed against her by two prominent Christian organizations, JNS reported.
The ruling was issued on May 15 by the US District Court for the District of Colorado. The court ruled that Albanese can be legally served via electronic mail and social media channels.
The decision bypasses previous bureaucratic obstacles and establishes that the controversial UN official - who is currently believed to be residing in Tunisia - must answer the charges. Under the federal ruling, Albanese has exactly 21 days to submit a formal response to the court, or a default judgment will be entered against her.
The litigation was initiated in September by Colorado-based Christian Friends of Israeli Communities (CFOIC) and Christians for Israel USA. The charities took legal action after being targeted by Albanese in what they describe as an orchestrated intimidation campaign.
The legal dispute erupted when Albanese sent threatening letters to the two groups, purportedly as a preliminary step before publishing a highly biased UN report. In these communications, she alleged that the Christian charities, alongside other pro-Israel organizations, could face prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity in international courts.
Specifically, Albanese accused the charities of "knowingly spreading malicious lies" and falsely linked them to allegations of genocide and war crimes in Gaza.
The plaintiffs argue that Albanese's malicious claims caused severe reputational harm, directly hindered their ability to conduct vital charitable work, and were distributed with the specific intent to inflict damage. The charities are seeking a federal court mandate requiring Albanese to formally retract her statements, barring her from repeating the defamatory claims, and awarding monetary damages.
Albanese has repeatedly come under fire over her anti-Israel bias. She was recently condemned by several European Union foreign ministers for comments made at an Al Jazeera conference, in which Albanese had said: “The fact that instead of stopping Israel, most of the world has armed, given Israel political excuses, political sheltering, economic and financial support ... We who do not control large amounts of financial capitals, algorithms and weapons, we now see that we as a humanity have a common enemy."
Albanese later claimed in an interview that she "never, ever, ever said ‘Israel is the common enemy of humanity,'" calling the accusations "completely false accusations."
Albanese’s history of anti-Israel statements and actions is well-documented and dates back to social media posts uncovered in 2022, in which she claimed that the “Jewish lobby" controls the US.
At the time, Albanese rejected arguments that the comments about the “Jewish lobby" were antisemitic and claimed they were “mischaracterized", but her anti-Israel bias has continued to be exposed since.
Her criticism of Israel has grown since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack in Israel which Albanese described as an act that must be viewed in “context" and as a response to Israeli “aggression."
In late March, Albanese claimed that the world has given Israel "a license to torture Palestinians", alleging that "torture has effectively become state policy" in Israel.
Responding to the comments, Israel's mission in Geneva said in a statement, "Francesca Albanese is not a promoter of human rights; she is an agent of chaos... and any document she produces is nothing but a politically-charged, activist rant."
Albanese "advocates dangerous extremist narratives to undermine the very existence of the State of Israel", it said.