Struggling to find answers: prime minister François Bayrou and President Emmanuel Macron. © Photo Sarah Meyssonnier / AFP

On April 25th a young Muslim worshipper, Aboubakar Cissé, was stabbed to death in a mosque in the town of La Grand-Combe in the south of France. The suspect in the case was arrested after fleeing to Italy. Since the murder, the French government – criticised for its slow initial reaction to the killing - has struggled to offer any political response beyond formulaic references to “universalism” and Republican values. As Ilyes Ramdani reports, this is down to the failure by Emmanuel Macron and his allies over his two terms of office to grapple with the issues of racism and discrimination.

© Photos Elodie Grégoire et Sebastien Ortola / REA

Prime minister François Bayrou may not have known everything about the abuses being committed at the private Catholic school at Bétharram in south-west France, but he knew enough while occupying various political posts over the years to at least have tried to take action. Yet he did nothing. On May 14th he is due to appear before a parliamentary inquiry into the unfolding scandal at the independent school. In this op-ed article, Mediapart's Fabrice Arfi wonders whether the head of the French government will continue to double down on his disastrous strategy of lying over the issue.

© Photo illustration Sébastien Calvet / Mediapart

The latest data from the Ministry of the Interior and France's anti-corruption agency show there has been a sharp rise in the number of offences involving dishonesty or breaches of probity, across all categories of such crime. This leap has been driven in particular by the number of cases of corruption, which has almost doubled over that period. Yet despite these startling figures and recent high-profile corruption cases involving prominent figures, France's political leaders continue to ignore the issue, as Fabrice Arfi and Antton Rouget report.

Senior Muslim cleric Abdallah Zekri. © Matthieu Alexandre / AFP

Last Friday a Muslim worshipper was stabbed to death at a mosque in the small southern French town of La Grand-Combe. The suspect then fled but has since been arrested in Italy. The brutal killing of the young victim, Aboubakar Cissé, has caused deep grief, anger and political controversy. The government has been accused of being slow to react to the killing while a section of the French Left has attacked the mood of “Islamophobia” in France. In the wake of this stabbing Mediapart spoke to Abdallah Zekri, the rector of the Sud-Nîmes mosque in southern France and vice-president of the Muslim representative body the Conseil français du culte musulman (CFCM). He criticised the way Muslims in France are stigmatised and said he, too, was shocked by the slow response of the authorities after the young man's murder. He spoke to Mediapart's Yann Philippin.

© Collections Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, EST VOY 3 (156)

When Paris receives a request from a foreign country for the return of human remains held in France's public museum collections, such demands can be granted under recent legislation. But the French state argues that there is a legal vacuum when such claims instead come from French overseas territories such as French Guiana on the South American mainland and Réunion in the Indian Ocean, both of which are governed from Paris. Julien Sartre reports on attempts to change the law to allow remains held by metropolitan museums to be returned to these distant French territories.

French prime minister François Bayrou. © Photo Sébastien Calvet / Mediapart

The saga of the sexual abuse scandal at the Notre Dame de Bétharram private Catholic school in south-west France, and just what the current French prime minister François Bayrou knew about it at the time, has taken another twist. Speaking during a Mediapart broadcast, Bayrou's daughter Hélène Perlant, who was a pupil at the school, confirmed that her father had indeed gone to the home of Judge Christian Mirande back in 1998 to speak about an ongoing criminal investigation into rape allegations against the school's former headteacher. François Bayrou had hitherto denied doing so. But following his daughter's comments the prime minister's office formally acknowledged that a meeting did indeed take place at the time. An opposition Member of Parliament has now called on the prime minister to resign for “lying several times” over the case. Mathieu Magnaudeix, David Perrotin and Antton Rouget report.

LVMH boss Bernard Arnault. © Photo Thibaud Moritz / AFP

At the recent LVMH annual meeting in Paris, shareholders of the luxury goods group granted its 76-year-old billionaire boss Bernard Arnault the right to continue at the helm until the age of 85. The veteran businessman seized the opportunity to proclaim a stance that was anti-European and closely aligned with the position of US tech billionaire and Donald Trump ally Elon Musk. In particular, the group's boss described the European Union as a “bureaucratic” body devoted to “issuing regulations”. These comments by Arnault, one of the richest people on the planet, mark the culmination of a political evolution on his part, and come as the luxury empire begins to show signs of faltering. Romaric Godin reports.

Pope Francis during a Papal Audience at the Vatican, December 2022. © Photo Evandro Inetti / Zuma Press Wire / Abaca

Pope Francis, the first ever South American pontiff who died on Monday aged 88, leaves behind him a mixed and contradictory legacy. He notably took up the cause of migrants, championed environmentalism and denounced the unfettered pursuit of wealth as the 'dung of the devil'. But he also fiercely opposed abortion, condemned homosexuality and leaves a controversial record on tackling sexual abuse by the clergy. Mediapart co-editor Lénaïg Bredoux looks back at the highs and lows of his 12 years as head of the Catholic Church.  

Left: Haitian president signs France's 1825 'indemnity' treaty and (right) French President Emmanuel Macron, April 15th 2025. © Leemage / Bridgeman Images et Sarah Meyssonnier / pool / AFP

April 17th marked the bicentenary of France’s recognition of the independence of Haiti, its former colony that won freedom in a revolution led by slaves. In return, Paris imposed a crippling debt upon the new Caribbean nation in the form of an indemnity to be paid to former slave masters for their losses, notably plantations. Many historians argue that the huge debt payment stunted Haiti’s future development, leaving it today one of the poorest countries in the world. Emmanuel Macron last week announced the creation of a bi-lateral commission to look at this episode of history “in the face”, but the French President was careful to make no commitment to pay reparations to Haiti. Ludovic Lamant reports.

Emmanuel Macron and his Algerian counterpart Abdelmadjid Tebboune during a G7 summit in Italy, June 13th 2024. © Photo Ludovic Marin / AFP

Just as a long period of soured relations between France and Algeria, its former North African colony, appeared to be on the mend, a new crisis has flared up between the two countries, representing the greatest rift since the end of the Algerian war of independence in 1962. The arrest in France of an Algerian consulate official for the alleged kidnapping of an opponent in exile this week has already led to the tit-for-tat expulsions of officials from both countries. In this analysis of the latest developments, Ilyes Ramdani argues that the potential consequences of the dispute are immeasurable.    

Two Brittany hospitals where Joël Le Scouarnec allegedly committed rape and sexual abuse. © Photos DR

Retired French surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec, 74, is standing trial on charges of raping and sexually assaulting 299 people, many of them child patients under his care. The trial, which began in February and is due to last until June, has heard the testimony of two of Le Scouarnec’s former surgeon colleagues, when the court focused on how the defendant, despite a conviction in 2005 for possession of child pornography, was able to continue operating on children. Both witnesses explained their failure to raise the alarm within their medical establishments was because it was “not our problem”. Hugo Lemonier reports from the court in Vannes, north-west France.

French Prime Minister François Bayrou during a parliamentary session on April 9th 2025. © Photo Stéphane de Sakutin / AFP

French Prime Minister François Bayrou was this week further engulfed in controversy over whether he knew but kept quiet about complaints of sexual assault, including rape, and physical cruelty at a Catholic school in his political fiefdom, and where his wife was a teacher and several of his children were pupils. Bayrou has denied knowing of the allegations. A parliamentary committee of inquiry into the scandal at the Notre-Dame de Bétharram institution on Thursday heard the testimony, under oath, of a gendarmerie detective and magistrate involved in investigating early rape allegations, and who contradicted Bayrou’s claims of being unaware of the events. “For me, François Bayrou has lied,” commented a rapporteur for the committee. Antton Rouget reports.

A court artist's sketch of Nicolas Sarkozy (left) and his four lawyers, April 8th 2025. © Dessin d’audience Matthieu Fayette

The trial of Nicolas Sarkozy and 11 others on corruption charges relating to the alleged funding of the former French president’s 2007 election campaign by the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi ended this week with the speeches of Sarkozy’s defence team. The four lawyers spoke for five hours calling for the charges against him to be thrown out and denouncing an “empty” case brought by prosecutors, who have requested Sarkozy be handed a seven-year prison sentence. Given the final word on Tuesday before the judges announce their verdicts in September, Sarkozy dismissed what he said was a “political and violent” prosecution case. Fabrice Arfi was in court on the day the curtain went down on an extraordinary trial.

Marine Le Pen and her protégé Jordan Bardella. © Photos Michel Euler / AP via Sipa et Frederick Florin / AFP

At the beginning of last week the far-right politician Marine Le Pen was convicted of embezzling European Parliament funds and immediately banned from running for public office for five years, ruling her out of the 2027 presidential contest. Her party, Rassemblement National, yesterday held a public protest against the court's ruling. In between there have been all kinds of wild claims that this judicial decision was somehow undermining democracy. In this op-ed article, Mediapart's Antton Rouget and Ellen Salvi argue that these post-verdict attacks on the very idea of justice should not be taken lightly. Across the world, they say, the far-right is stepping up its attempts to tear down democratic checks and balances, and to challenge the rule of law.

Writer and activist Frantz Fanon, right. © Photo UPI / AFP

A biopic partly filmed in Tunisia about the anti-racist and anti-colonial activist Frantz Fanon has just been released in France to mark the centenary of the writer's birth. But this anniversary also offers countries in North Africa a chance to rediscover the work of a man who has remained too little known in the region and for too long, despite the fact that he lived in both Tunisia and Algeria. Indeed Fanon, a French psychiatrist born in what was then the French colony of Martinique in the Caribbean, later self-identified as Algerian. Lilia Blaise reports from Tunis on the revival of interest in this major figure in anti-colonial thinking.