On Tuesday February 24th the French president François Hollande and Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi met in Paris to give their full backing to the highly-controversial high-speed rail link between Lyon and Turin. Much of the bitter opposition to the railway focuses on the planned 57km tunnel through the Alps between the Susa valley in Italy and the Maurienne valley in France. One of the most vehement opponents of the scheme is acclaimed Italian novelist and translator Erri de Luca. His comment that the railway project should be “sabotaged” has now landed him in court for the alleged incitement of a crime, over which he faces a five-year jail term if found guilty. Here the Italian author talks to Mathilde Auvillain about his determination to defend his right to freedom of expression.
Both French president François Hollande and American head of state Barack Obama flew to Riyadh to pay their respects after the death of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on January 23rd. For the French leader it was yet another journey to the Arabian kingdom that he has already twice honoured with state visits. France and the United States - and other Western countries – have stayed close diplomatically to Saudi Arabia, seeing it as a source of oil, a massive market to buy their weapons and a pivotal place to exchange key intelligence. But the flipside of this approach, write Thomas Cantaloube and Pierre Puchot, is that these countries have been trapped into supporting Saudi's own regional political games, while also backing one of the most repressive regimes on earth. Moreover, at a time when France and other nations have made fighting terrorism their international priority, elements in the Saudi kingdom are still suspected of financial links with prominent terror groups.
