In a series of exclusive reports that began in July, Mediapart has revealed the long-standing close links between France-based businessman and arms dealer Ziad Takieddine and the inner circle of advisers and aides surrounding Nicolas Sarkozy, before and after he became French president. Now a Mediapart journalist has made an official complaint after receiving death threats linked to the stories. Here Editor-in-Chief Edwy Plenel discloses the nature of the threats and explains why Mediapart has decided to lodge the complaint with the legal authorities.
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On Wednesday, August 31st, Fabrice Arfi, a Mediapart journalist, filed a complaint with the Paris public prosecutor against person or persons unknown concerning a series of overt death threats. He received those threats at the outset of our investigation based on the Takieddine documents - even before the latter were made public. The death threats stem from Pierre Sellier, who has worked for the arms broker Ziad Takieddine and whose economic intelligence firm, Salamandre, operates within Sarkozyist circles of power.
Our very first article on Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske's investigation into the Takieddine documents was posted on July 10th 2011. In the week preceding publication of that article, from July 2nd-8th, Fabrice Arfi received a slew of text messages, eight in all, sent from Pierre Sellier's cell phone. Some of those messages were copied and sent to the telephone of the Editor-in-chief of Mediapart [Edwy Plenel], too.
It was a clear-cut case of harassment, indeed some of the text messages were sent in the middle of the night. The messages were crudely worded, sometimes muddled in meaning, but clearly menacing in intent. This one, for example, was received at 6.06pm on July 3rd: "You were right, babe! In Karachi, we're going to ‘smash in some knees'. I hope you finally managed to shave your beard. Best regards." Another one, sent at 11pm on July 7th: "Moustachioed Plenel and bearded Arfi, if I catch you trying to fuck judge Trevidic again [Editor's note: magistrate investigating the Karachi bombing], I'm really going to get angry, this is a TRUE THREAT to protect the judge, report me to the judge, please".
We would have paid no further attention to these ravings if we hadn't known Pierre Sellier's character and career. The founder, majority shareholder and, intermittently, president of the economic intelligence company Salamandre is a man who moves in intelligence circles, though on the fringe of official agencies. Former high-ranking officials at the DGSE (General Directorate for External Security, French foreign intelligence agency), DST (Directorate of Territorial Surveillance, French domestic intelligence agency) and the criminal investigation department, no less, have agreed to work with him and back his business.
In view of that, and intrigued by these messages from out of the blue that came before we had even gone public with the Takieddine story or personally contacted him, we decided to find out the truth. So Karl Laske called Pierre Sellier on July 5th, and as a precaution we recorded that conversation. Introducing himself as a journalist at Mediapart, Karl Laske told his interlocutor he wished to understand the meaning of the messages he had received.
Pierre Sellier replied: "Mediapart isn't a newspaper, it's a piece of shit. [...] Listen to me. I'm a killer. I'm a killer from the Action Department, you know that. That Arfi: I'm going to waste him. Shave his beard and his whole balls. Edwy Plenel: the moustache. I'll shave his moustache. I'll fuck him up the ass. I'm a hundred times smarter than you. I have nothing against you, you write what you want. You can libel me. I don't give a shit. You Karl Laske, I have nothing against you. But Arfi, on the other hand, I'm going to butcher him, fuck him up the ass. I'm going to smash his face in. Motherfucker, motherfucker. You get it? I'm going to kill him. Action Department. Three bullets in the head. Motherfucker."
As set forth in the complaint filed by our solicitor Jean-Pierre Mignard on behalf of Fabrice Arfi and of course with Mediapart's full support (download complaint in PDF) these statements fall under Article 222-17 paragraph 2 of the French Penal Code (see here), which makes it a punishable offence to threaten to commit a felony or misdemeanour against a person or persons and increases the sentence "if it is a death threat" (three years' imprisonment and a 45,000 euro fine).
A “useful lunatic” close to Sarkozy’s circle
Naturally, we were hesitant about reporting the matter to the prosecutor. Investigative journalists who upset powerful interests and secret networks are used to coming across cranks, lunatics and sociopaths. And ordinarily, lest one succumb to pointless paranoia, they do not deserve to be paid any attention, which is what they are actually seeking. But on our lawyer's advice we did finally resolve to pursue the matter because, in this instance, Pierre Sellier is no minor character.
This "useful lunatic", as Fabrice Arfi and Fabrice Lhomme described him in Le Contrat (published by Stock), their book about the Karachigate affair that was exposed by Mediapart beginning in 2008, moves in powerful circles, who sometimes enlist his services. Companies in the defence and arms sector utilise the capabilities of his company Salamandre, of which he became president once more on July 29th. Above all, Pierre Sellier is a close associate of Ziad Takieddine, the go-between for the Sarkozy clan, and is mentioned several times in the Takieddine documents.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
Salamandre is one of those private-sector contractors to which official intelligence agencies farm out jobs for which they cannot assume responsibility themselves. Two former big wheels from the DGSE foreign intelligence agency, François Mermet and Michel Lacarrière, served on the company's board of directors. In 2009 Pierre Sellier inundated editorial offices with emails and text messages - which is why the news weekly Paris Match nicknamed him "Zorro du texto" ("SMS Zorro") - in a blatant misinformation campaign concerning the Karachi affair, after it was taken up again by Mediapart in the light of secret kickbacks to fund Edouard Balladur's 1995 presidential campaign and the possible involvement of Nicolas Sarkozy.
"Every time, Pierre Sellier would step in," Fabrice Arfi and Fabrice Lhomme wrote in Le Contrat, "in order to defend Nicolas Sarkozy - and attack the president's enemies, the Chirac set. Which raised the obvious question: Were Sellier and his organisation hired by the Élysée [Editor's note: the French president's office] to launch a crusade or two? Pierre Sellier, who in late 2009 suddenly stopped besieging the editorial offices with his pro-Sarkozy invective, denies having been used in this way. ‘I wasn't hired by the president's office and never have been: at no time was I approached by the Sarkozyists,' he maintains."
And yet in late 2010, our colleagues at Bakchich revealed that their satirical news site had been closely monitored in 2008 at the behest of Claude Guéant, the president's chief of staff at the time and now interior minister. The report on Bakchich submitted to the president's office via Guéant was authored by Pierre Sellier's company Salamandre.
Moreover, the Takieddine documents include a great many reports drawn up by Pierre Sellier in Salamandre's name and addressed to Ziad Takieddine, particularly reports on the companies Veolia, Sagem and Gemplus - but also on Libya, specifically regarding plans for a think tank between France under Nicolas Sarkozy and Libya under Colonel Gaddafi, to "formulate and propose main areas of long-term cooperation on common security and prosperity" issues.
The Takieddine documents even contain an extended profile of Nicolas Sarkozy drafted by Salamandre, covering the president's origins, childhood and career. Naturally, these efforts are not entirely disinterested: the Takieddine documents show the trace of at least one 150,000 euro payment, in 2005, made by the Sarkozy clan's arms broker to Pierre Sellier.
Against this backdrop, we decided to take Pierre Sellier's threats seriously, as melodramatic as they seem. There should be no mistake about it: this harassment over the phone, this verbal intimidation and these overt threats are meant to sow fear and doubt, to induce the journalists to give up or back down. In flagrant violation of the democratic principle of freedom of the press, this brutal intimidation campaign is all the more reprehensible coming, as it does, from a personage whose services are used without any qualms by the current administration and its unofficial go-betweens.
We do not know Pierre Sellier's exact motives, nor do we know whether he was instructed to undertake this crusade. We have filed our complaint in the hope of getting answers to these questions. Above all, we and Fabrice Arfi, the main victim of this intimidation campaign, are asking the law enforcement authorities to take prompt action to put a stop to these heinous acts and punish them with the full force of the law.
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English version: Eric Rosencrantz
(Editing by Michael Streeter)