In July 1994 in Rwanda, immediately after the fall of the murderous Hutu regime that had led the genocide of hundreds of thousands of the minority ethnic Tutsi population, a group of regime officials, including its president, had fled into a “safe zone” controlled by the French army. A document now discovered in official archives in Paris proves that the French government knew of the presence of the regime officials, but instead of detaining them it organised their escape out of Rwanda. The document, a cable sent from the office of then French foreign minister Alain Juppé, was signed by the current head of the French foreign intelligence agency, the DGSE. Fabrice Arfi reports.
The French parliament this week began debating draft legislation aimed at strengthening the legal arsenal against the sexual abuse of minors, including raising the age of consent for sexual relations with an adult and introducing heavier sentences. The subject of sexual abuse of children has come to the fore in France following a series of revelations concerning high-profile individuals, the latest of which has prompted a movement on social media under the hashtag ‘#MeTooInceste’. Cécile Andrzejewski hears from magistrates about the difficulties of prosecuting incestuous sexual abuse of children, and why so many cases are simply dropped.
The messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines against Covid-19 infection are apparently highly effective, but they are also in too short supply to meet current demand. In France, doctors have found that vials of the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna contain more than the indicated number of doses. By collecting the dregs of the bottles, there is the potential of producing millions more doses from existing supplies. But the French health authorities are refusing to authorise the practice. Joseph Confavreux and Caroline Coq-Chodorge report.
On Thursday January 28th a supervisor at a Pôle Emploi employment centre in south-east France was shot dead, sending a shock wave of alarm through all branches of the government agency. Staff had already seen growing violence and tension in their branches from disgruntled job seekers, a discontent that has been further fuelled by the Covid-19 crisis and its impact on the economy. As Cécile Hautefeuille found out, fear among job centre staff is now rapidly turning to anger.
Mediapart has had access to new information in the current investigation into rape allegations against France's interior minister Gérald Darmanin, claims that date back to 2009. Some documents we have seen contradict parts of his defence. The file also shows that when he was questioned by the investigating judge in mid-December 2020 the minister - who denies the claims - changed his version of events over a key exchange of SMS messages, in which the complainant accuses him of having “abused his position”. And in addition the minister gave new explanations to justify some of the more embarrassing aspects of the case. Antton Rouget and Marine Turchi report.
If you cannot come to the vaccine, then the vaccine will come to you. That is the idea behind the 'Vacci'bus' which is visiting parts of rural France at the moment to vaccinate older people in isolated villages against Covid-19. Mediapart went on board a bus servicing the area around Reims where the idea first began, and met some of the residents of these remote communities north-east of Paris. The elderly inhabitants were delighted to be on the bus and receiving their vaccination. But they also revealed what they have been enduring in their village homes during the long months of the epidemic. “We're alone, afraid and we don't see anyone,” one woman said. Cécile Andrzejewski reports.
For nearly twenty years fishermen, residents and environment inspectors have raised the alarm over pollution seeping from an industrial bottling plant owned by the French group Roxane in Normandy. Locals say the organic pollution has caused major harm to the stream, which feeds into the River Sarthe. Roxane, the third largest French bottling company and owner of Cristaline, the most widely-consumed bottled water in the country, also has its headquarters at the site. Mathieu Martiniere of the independent journalists collective 'We Report' investigates.
Adolf Hitler’s notorious, two-volume manifesto Mein Kampf was published in France last month in a scholarly version, heavily annotated by a team of historians, destined as a work of academic reference that analyses and explains the contexts, notably historical and cultural, of the hate-filled text. Olivier Mannoni is the German-to-French translator of this revised version of Hitler’s rantings, and here he tells Santiago Artozqui of the challenges of working for nine years on the “sticky, vile, deceitful, paranoiac and violent text”, and how the rigour of the historians gave a “solidity” and “reassuring stability” to his work.
The Ocean Viking, flagship of the French-based maritime humanitarian organisation SOS Méditerranée, was allowed to dock in Sicily on Monday after rescuing 374 migrants attempting, in overcrowded rubber dinghies, the hazardous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea from Libya to Europe. It was the first time the ship had been on a search and rescue operation since it was blocked for five months last year in an Italian port. Mediapart’s Nejma Brahim was aboard the Ocean Viking for its two-week sortie, and reports on the tense last moments of its mission as it battled heavy seas between Malta and Sicily.
One of the most mysterious, high-profile murder mysteries in France over the past five decades was the disappearance without trace in 1977 of Agnès Le Roux, the 29-year-old heiress of one of the country’s biggest casinos, the Palais de la Méditerranée in the Riviera city of Nice. In an extraordinary legal saga, her former lover, lawyer Maurice Agnelet, was acquitted of murdering her, after an initial case against him had been dropped, and twice found guilty. Last Tuesday, Agnelet, 82, died, apparently of a heart attack, shortly after he was released from prison on medical grounds. His death most certainly removes the last hope of ever knowing the truth of what really happened to Agnès Le Roux. Michel Henry reports on an enduring mystery.
