The pre-trial detention of a journalist who exposed embarrassing links between the French military intelligence service (DRM) and Egyptian security forces is raising questions about freedom of the press. Experts believe the affair could potentially complicate Paris’s endorsement of new EU regulations on the protection of journalists.
Ariane Lavrilleux was arrested at her Marseilles apartment in the early hours of Tuesday, September 19th, before being detained for 39 hours at a nearby police station for her alleged role in leaking information obtained from an anonymous Ministry of Defense official into criminal collaboration between France and the El-Sisi dictatorship.
A journalist with the investigative website Disclose, Lavrilleux detailed intelligence collaboration between Paris and Cairo in the murder of human traffickers along the Egyptian-Libyan border in a project known as the “Egypt Papers” released in November 2021.
According to her findings, French security services were complicit in at least 19 separate extrajudicial bombings against smugglers between 2016 and 2018 in an operation known as “Sirli” with officials ignoring warnings from the central government back in Paris.
According to Lavrilleux’s lawyers, the journalist’s laptop and other devices were seized during the raid in what is believed to be an attempt to expose her government source. French authorities had filed a criminal complaint with prosecutors against Lavrilleux for the exposé in July of last year with the raids being conducted by the country’s domestic intelligence agency DGSI in the presence of a judge.
Lavrilleux’s detention coincides with similar harassment by three journalists working with the left-wing daily Libération probing the murder of a 23-year-old man last year by police allegedly involving internal police documents being leaked.
There are growing calls from advocacy groups such as Reporters Without Borders to overhaul current French press laws that allow source protection to be overridden in the interests of national security. There is also uncertainty as to whether new EU laws will clarify the matter.
The European Parliament is expected to adopt its position on the controversial European Media Freedom Act on October 3rd. It is ostensibly designed to provide a common code on media pluralism throughout the bloc, but some MEPs and human rights groups have skewered it for allegedly opening up the prospect of governments snooping on journalists.
