The authorities have announced their intention to appeal after an administrative court ordered the suspension of work on the highly-controversial Toulouse-Castres A69 motorway in south-west France. The court – the first in France to strike down plans for a motorway on environmental grounds - annulled the original permission that had allowed work to start on the planned 33-mile route. Yet though the government has reiterated its determination to forge ahead with this major infrastructure project, none of the economic and social reasons it gives to justify this approach reflect the reality on the ground, argues Jade Lindgaard in this op-ed article.
In the late 1990s, an initial criminal investigation into sexual assaults at Notre-Dame-de-Bétharram near Pau in south-west France collapsed following the release from custody of the school's former director. The gendarme in charge of the probe at the time says he was told that François Bayrou – now France's prime minister – intervened with the chief prosecutor over the case involving the prestigious private Catholic establishment, which is located in his political fiefdom and which his own children attended. Bayrou himself has denied any such intervention took place. A lawyer representing victims in the abuse scandal has now called for an inquiry into events. And in an interview with Mediapart the retired gendarme, Alain Hontangs, says he would welcome such a move. David Perrotin and Antton Rouget report.
Jim P., a French citizen employed as a butler, was given a suspended 18-month prison sentence by a French court on Friday for stealing from his former employer Sergei Pugachev, a former Russian oligarch turned critic of Vladimir Putin. In reality, Jim P. had been spying on his boss with the help of a London-based private intelligence-gathering company called Diligence who were themselves apparently working on behalf of a Russian state organisation. Gabrielle Leroyer reports on this intriguing saga.
The trial in Paris of five jihadists accused of the kidnappings and detention of four French journalists in Syria in 2013, and the perpetration of “acts of torture and barbarity” against their captives, which now enters its second week, has been hearing harrowing accounts of the survivors’ experiences at the hands of the Islamic State group. It also heard the moving accounts by the wife and two daughters of British aid worker David Haines, who was held alongside the French hostages and finally beheaded by his Islamic State captors. Matthieu Suc reports.
After Palestine, Ukraine has become the second victim of a pact of oligarchs established between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, writes Mediapart co-founder Edwy Plenel, who argues that by promoting and imposing a law of the strongest versus the principle of an equality of rights, their alliance amounts, at a global level, to the domination of a Mafia-like capitalism.
The trial opened in Paris on Monday of five jihadists accused of the kidnapping and detention of four French journalists in Syria in 2013 and the perpetration of “acts of torture and barbarity” at a hospital in Aleppo taken over by Islamic State of Iraq and Levant group. Relatives of British aid worker David Haines, who was held alongside the French hostages before he was later decapitated, are present at the month-long trial as civil parties to the case, as is also his Italian colleague and fellow captive Federico Motka. Matthieu Suc reports on the background of the case and the evidence that emerged from almost ten years of investigations.
French Prime Minister François Bayrou faced more questions in parliament on Wednesday over Mediapart’s revelations that he failed to intervene in a scandal of violence and sexual assaults against pupils of a Catholic secondary school in his political fiefdom in south-west France, despite being made aware of the events. He told parliament that he was “never” informed of the attacks. Mediapart can reveal documents and first-hand accounts that indicate the contrary. David Perrotin and Antton Rouget report.
By attacking the rule of law, the newly-installed United States president is weakening democratic checks and balances and undermining resistance. His blizzard of executive orders echoes the US military's 'shock and awe' tactics of the Iraq War and has left opponents reeling. In order to oppose this catastrophic state of affairs, argues Mediapart's publishing editor Carine Fouteau in this op-ed article, we urgently need to put an end to factional infighting, form a united front and confront it head on.
It is thought that, on average, a child dies at the hands of their parents every five days in France. But this is just an estimate as no detailed and centralised record is kept of the number of children killed in this way each year. In an investigation Mediapart has examined the deaths of 46 young children who met a violent end within their family in 2024. Often these killings are treated as isolated “cases”. But the sheer number of such deaths shows the extent to which fatal violence against young children is systemic in the country. “Infanticide is the tip of the iceberg of the particular violence inflicted on children in a society where adults dominate them in countless ways,” says one campaigner. Mathilde Mathieu reports.
Nicolas Sarkozy and three former ministers are standing trial in Paris over claims that the former president's successful 2007 election campaign was part-funded by the Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. And that the North African country – whose leader was one of the most notorious dictators on the planet – received favours in exchange. There are 13 defendants in all. In Wednesday's court hearing Nicolas Sarkozy appeared to be in difficulty when questioned on two issues in the case. One was the nuclear power plant that France wanted to sell to the Libyan dictator in 2007. The other was the exfiltration in 2011 – first from Libya, later from France - of Gaddafi's former chief of staff Bashir Saleh when the latter was the object of an Interpol arrest warrant. Fabrice Arfi reports on Wednesday's hearing.
