French investigative information outlet Disclose says considered one of its reporters has been arrested and her residence searched by the nation’s home intelligence company
ByTHOMAS ADAMSON Related Press
September 19, 2023, 1:31 PM
PARIS — A French journalist was arrested and her residence searched Tuesday by the nation’s home intelligence company, her employer the investigative information outlet Disclose, stated.
Disclose stated reporter Ariane Lavrilleux’s detention was linked to her reporting on leaked paperwork implicating French intelligence’s alleged position within the Egyptian authorities’s alleged focusing on of civilians.
The media outlet known as the detention an “unacceptable” assault on press freedoms.
The Common Directorate of Inner Safety opened an investigation in July 2022 into Disclose’s work, which it stated was “compromising nationwide protection secrets and techniques and revealing data that might result in the identification of a protected agent.”
The allegations stem from a sequence of exposés initiated in November 2021 by which Disclose chronicled the alleged misuse of French navy intelligence by the Egyptian navy in an operation initially meant to establish Islamic militants.
The scope of Operation Sirli allegedly expanded to facilitate practically 20 focused strikes performed by the Egyptian navy towards people returning to Egypt from Libya between 2016 and 2018 who have been suspected of smuggling. However subsequent reviews stated lots of these focused weren’t militants, a extreme breach in protocols concerning the focusing on of civilians and evoking potential human rights violations.
In a put up on the platform X, previously often known as Twitter, Disclose stated that its reporting “relied on a number of hundred prime secret paperwork to unveil a marketing campaign of arbitrary executions” orchestrated by Egyptian chief Abdel Fattah el-Sissi “with the complicity of the French state.”
A spokesman for the Egyptian international ministry didn’t instantly reply to cellphone calls and a message in search of remark Tuesday.
Tuesday’s arrest was prone to intensify scrutiny and immediate questions in French media over the nation’s alleged position in and document on human rights in Egypt.
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Related Press author Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed.