Over the past five years in France, one person has died and at least 35 others have been wounded, many seriously, by the hard rubber projectiles fired from supposedly non-lethal “defence” guns, called LBDs, used by police on crowd-control missions. While LBDs have left demonstrators and bystanders with shocking life-changing wounds, including the irreversible blinding of eyes and skull fractures, Mediapart has discovered that the rules surrounding the minimum distance between police officers using the weapon and their target have been loosened. Pascale Pascariello reports.
Several thousand people gathered in the north-east French town of Arras on Sunday to pay tribute to the victims of the knife attack at a local school on Friday which left a schoolteacher dead and three of his colleagues seriously wounded. The attacker, a 20-year-old man originally from the Russian Federation’s Caucasus region who arrived in France with his family in 2008, had been the subject of surveillance by France’s domestic intelligence agency, the DGSI, who considered him a potential danger for his apparent affiliation with radical Islamism. But his intention to commit an imminent attack was not identified. Matthieu Suc reports on the reasons behind the failure, and several similar previous cases in France that highlight the difficulties of intelligence services in preventing terrorist attacks.
After a marathon four days of questioning last week, the former president of the Republic was formally placed under investigation for being the “beneficiary of witness tampering” and for “criminal conspiracy”. The investigation in question is into a fake retraction by intermediary Ziad Takieddine, a witness in the scandal concerning alleged Libyan funding of Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign. Fabrice Arfi, Karl Laske and Antton Rouget report.
The Predator Files investigation has revealed how the French external intelligence agency, the DGSE, cooperated very closely with the surveillance equipment firm Nexa. This is despite the fact that the French group was suspected by French prosecutors of being complicit in torture by exporting its products to dictatorial regimes. Nexa's clients have also included several French ministries and a number of the country's intelligence agencies. Yann Philippin and Matthieu Suc report.
Mediapart is part of an international investigation called 'Predator Files' which has revealed how French group Nexa sold the spy software 'Predator' to three autocratic regimes. The same media investigation shows that, after making direct contact with President Emmanuel Macron, the company used his former bodyguard and personal security adviser Alexandre Benalla to try to sell spyware to Saudi Arabia. This was despite the murder of Saudi regime critic and journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Yet 18 months after these deeply embarrassing facts for the Élysée were unearthed, a judicial investigation has stalled. Yann Philippin and Antton Rouget report.
Mediapart and its partners in the journalistic consortium European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) can reveal here how a private Swiss firm sent to the intelligence services of the United Arab Emirates the names of more than 1,000 European individuals and organisations who it described, often wrongly, as being close to the Muslim Brotherhood. Among the more than 200 French victims who feature on the absurd lists figure former minister and Socialist Party presidential election candidate Benoît Hamon and the former senator and now deputy mayor of Marseille, Samia Ghali. Also listed, as organisations, are France’s prestigious National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the political party La France Insoumise. Clément Fayol, Yann Philippin, Antton Rouget and Antoine Harari report.
On June 13th and 14th former president Nicolas Sarkozy was questioned by judges as part of an ongoing investigation into the fake retraction by Ziad Takieddine, a key witness in a parallel probe into Libya's alleged funding of the ex-head of state's 2007 election campaign. Under questioning the former president acknowledged that a key figure in the fake retraction case, Noël Dubus, had visited him to receive signed copies of his book. In one copy of his book Nicolas Sarkozy wrote 'Thanks for everything'. Yet businesswoman and paparazzi agency boss Michèle Marchand, who has been placed under formal investigation in the case, had previously denied that this episode even took place. Fabrice Arfi, Karl Laske and Antton Rouget report.
All-expenses paid trips, luxury watches, oodles of cash and a million dollars: the so-called “crook of the century”, French businessman Arnaud Mimran, has spoken at great length in a prison cell bugged by the judicial authorities about his friend 'Bibi' – the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The convicted fraudster, who is also suspected of involvement in three murders – which he strongly denies - spoke, too, about his relations with French MP Meyer Habib. Fabrice Arfi reports.
After ten years of investigation, judges have decided that there is sufficient evidence to send former French president Nicolas Sarkozy to stand trial in the affair concerning the alleged illegal Libyan financing of his 2007 election campaign. The investigating judges are also sending three of the ex-president's ministers for trial in the same affair: Claude Guéant, Brice Hortefeux and Éric Woerth. As Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report, this is an unprecedented situation in French political and legal history.
The practice of using sheep rather than mowers to keep down the grass in green spaces has grown massively in popularity over the last decade in France. It is seen as environmentally-friendly, quieter - and more cost effective. But behind the scenes there is fierce competition for market share between some of the companies and individuals that oversee the sheep grazing, in what can be a lucrative business. And as Floriane Louison reports, there are fears this competition can come at the price of the animals' well-being, and broader concerns that eco-grazing may amount to little more than a form of 'greenwashing'.
