When 13-year-old Aïcha fell ill at the family home in Paris her mother called the emergency services and three fire officers – who are often the first responders for medical emergencies in France – arrived at the scene. After thirty minutes the trio left, saying the teenager was faking her suffering, even though she was semi-conscious when they went. Twelve days later Aïcha died in hospital as the result of a brain haemorrhage. Her parents wonder whether their daughter may have lived had the fire officers taken her to hospital, and whether they would have taken her illness more seriously had she not been black. They have now deposed a formal legal complaint for manslaughter. Meanwhile one of fire officers has been disciplined. David Perrotin reports.
Mediapart and the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) network can reveal that the Greek Member of the European Parliament Eva Kaili, who is under investigation in the 'Qatargate affair', conducted an influence operation on behalf of the Gulf state, working directly with hidden lobbyists and two Qatari ministers. Kaili, who was the vice-president of the European Parliament, denies being guided in her actions by the lobbyists. Louis Colart and Yann Philippin report.
The man arrested over the murder of a German tourist near the Eiffel Tower on Saturday night, Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, was convicted in 2018 for involvement in a terrorist criminal conspiracy, having previously been in contact with the killers of two French police officers and a French priest. Then, after he was released from prison, he communicated online with the man who shortly afterwards killed teacher Samuel Paty in a Paris suburb. Rajabpour-Miyandoab, now aged 26, subsequently managed to convince the authorities that he was a reformed character. But some of those in charge of his rehabilitation have now told Mediapart that they always harboured doubts about whether he had left the world of radicalism behind. Matthieu Suc reports.
In the early hours of November 24th 2021, at least 27 people died when their inflatable dinghy sank off the French coast as they attempted a clandestine crossing of the Channel to Britain. The tragedy highlighted the desperate plight of tens of thousands of migrants who attempt the perilous crossing in flimsy and overcrowded boats, while the drownings continue. Mediapart interviewed two French maritime rescue volunteers who recount the terrifying incidents they have been involved in to save migrants from the treacherous Channel waters, and who complain of insufficient resources in face of the scale of the problem. Nejma Brahim and Pascale Pascariello report.
Julius Mwale, presented by Forbes magazine as “one of Kenya’s top entrepreneurs”, is fêted for his rags-to-riches life story in which he claims to have created a “multi-billion-dollar” company in the US. With ambitious and well-publicised projects to build pioneering smart cities in Kenya and Senegal, he enjoys rubbing shoulders with African presidents and celebrities from the worlds of entertainment and sports. But this investigation by Mediapart tells a different story, one of a trail of claims for unpaid bills, disputes with investors and lenders, and unfinished projects. Clément Bonnerot and Sonia Rolley report.
In recent months Siddiq Haftar, the eldest son of Libyan military strongman and suspected war criminal Khalifa Haftar, has been seeking to establish his international credentials as he eyes a possible bid to be his country's president one day. One of his ambitions was to be greeted in style at the European Parliament, and he duly visited the institution in September. But, as Mediapart reveals, the visit, led by a media-friendly imam and a far-right Member of the European Parliament, turned to fiasco. Yann Philippin and Antton Rouget report.
In 2019 a report from the French domestic intelligence agency the DGSI listed the “influential intermediaries” that were used by Russia in France during the run up to the European elections. The only four French political figures cited in this document were current or past members of Marine Le Pen's far-right Rassemblement National (RN). Among them was an Franco-Russian RN adviser at the European Parliament. Matthieu Suc and Marine Turchi report.
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.
