Five years after Mediapart's revelations on the case, actor Adèle Haenel has been vindicated in court. On February 3rd filmmaker Christophe Ruggia was sentenced to four years' imprisonment, two of which are suspended, with the other two to be served wearing an electronic bracelet, for sexually assaulting her when she was a minor. The court said that the director had “taken advantage of the power” which he had over the young actor at the time. After the verdict – in what has widely been seen as a landmark case for the #MeToo movement in France - Adèle Haenel told supporters: “Thank you for being here to advance human rights.” Marine Turchi reports.
Last month gendarmes in north-east France arrived at a school during morning break in order to escort a 14-year-old pupil off the premises and deport her and her family to Belgium. Since then, both the local state prefecture and the gendarmes have been forced to admit that in doing so they committed “errors”. And despite the toxic political climate in France, the immediate reaction from teachers, parents and some local politicians to the “scandalous” incident has managed to transform the debate on how migrants - and especially migrant children - are treated in the country. Mathilde Goanec reports.
The planned Seine-Nord Europe Canal will be 107 kilometres (66 miles) long, and will link the Paris region with the waterway network in northern France, ultimately ensuring navigation between the French capital and the inland waters of Belgium and the Netherlands. This new canal will start at Compiègne north of Paris and end near Cambrai in the north of the country. Mediapart's Margaux Houcine met opponents of the scheme who took to the treetops at Compiègne – before being removed by the police – to highlight what they see as both a pointless and environmentally-unfriendly project.
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. Wednesday's court hearing featured evidence from the former director of intelligence at France's overseas intelligence agency, the DGSE. Alain Juillet said that he had warned the former president's key allies and fellow defendants Brice Hortefeux and Claude Guéant of the risks they were taking by having contact with intermediaries – and also co-defendants - Ziad Takieddine and Alexandre Djouhri. Karl Laske reports
Even before they sign their first permanent employment contract, many Muslim students have already faced Islamophobic job-related discrimination, for example when applying for work experience or internships. And many young women applicants also agonise over whether or not to include a photo of them wearing the hijab or traditional Muslim headscarf with their CV. The discriminatory attitude displayed by potential bosses and employers is now leading these young women to question their future in France, even though this is the country where they were born and have grown up. Marie Turcan reports.
Immediately after taking office on January 20th, US President Donald Trump has begun his pledged crackdown on undocumented immigrants, with the arrests and deportations of many hundreds of people since last week, some of them on military cargo planes, and a significant hardening of the immigration system. Earlier this month Nejma Brahim travelled to California where she met with undocumented immigrants who spoke of their terror of being deported, some after having lived decades in the country.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Thursday published a ruling against France over a divorce case in which the wife was found to have been at fault for the collapse of her marriage because the mother of four had refused, over a period of several years, to have sexual relations with her husband. For the French justice system, the ECHR ruling marks the end of a notion of “marital duty” which has previously been cited by courts in apportioning the blame in divorce cases. "Marriage is no longer a sexual servitude," commented one of the divorcee's lawyers after the ruling. Marine Turchi reports.
Numerous European far-right leaders were invited to Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony on Monday, in what amounted to a message to those who he considers to be his friends across the Atlantic, and those he doesn’t. The pick of the bunch to become the bridge between the new US administration and Europe appears to be Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, while her Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orbán comes a close second. But, as Romaric Godin reports in this analysis of Trump’s relationship with Europe’s far-right, his predatory strategy threatens to make them nothing other than his useful idiots.
French editorial cartoonist Aurel (real name Aurélien Froment) this month published an essay in the format of an album warning of the steady decline of his profession, which he argues is due to the economic difficulties of the printed press, and the hijacking of what is termed the “Charlie spirit”, the term used to describe the irreverence exercised by the team of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists who were gunned down by Jihadist terrorists in January 2015. “Colleagues were assassinated because of their cartoons on religious themes,” he tells Mediapart’s Yunnes Abzouz. “But that’s not a reason it should become the alpha and omega of our freedom of expression.”
An attempt to exploit the impact of Operation 'Red Hands' – the painting of hand symbols on the Holocaust memorial in Paris in May 2024 - was made via a network of several thousand fake accounts on X. French analysts found that all these online bots - plus a curious French media outlet which tried to stir up controversy - were ultimately controlled by the Kremlin. Matthieu Suc reports in this third and concluding part of a Mediapart investigation into how France foiled a Russian destabilisation plot.
