The French intelligence service arrested journalist Ariane Lavrilleux on Tuesday and searched her home, her employer reported Disclose, a website for investigative journalism. According to the news organization, the arrest is related to its reporting on leaked documents that allegedly prove that the intelligence service DGSI played a role in the Egyptian government’s bombing of its own population. Disclose calls the arrest an “unacceptable” attack on press freedom.
The security service opened an investigation into this in July 2022 Disclosewhich the agency said “endangered state secrets and threatened to disclose information that could lead to the identification of a protected agent.”
Ariane Lavrilleux, herself a Frenchwoman, is one of the authors of the ‘Egypt Papers’, a series of articles in which Disclose In November 2021, it was revealed how information from French intelligence was allegedly used by the Egyptian army in an operation aimed at identifying Islamic militants. However, the scope of this ‘Operation Sirli’ is said to have been expanded to also facilitate nearly twenty army bombings. These attacks targeted Egyptian citizens who returned to Egypt from Libya between 2016 and 2018 and were suspected of human and arms smuggling. According to later reports, many targets were not militants, a possible human rights violation.
Despite warnings from officials about the operation, French authorities reportedly canceled the mission Disclose did not want to stop. After the publications of Disclose the French Ministry of Defense filed a complaint for ‘breach of national defense secrecy’.
Disclose says in a message on The Egyptian government does not respond to questions from news agencies.
Amnesty France says it is “very concerned”. “Taking a journalist into custody for doing her job is a threat to press freedom,” said spokesperson Katia Roux.
Press organization Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) also condemns the search and arrest of the journalist. “We fear that the actions of the DGSI will undermine the secrecy of the sources,” RSF said.
A version of this article also appeared in the September 21, 2023 newspaper.