French journalist Ariane Lavrilleux, who was arrested on Tuesday by the domestic intelligence service DGSI, has been released, AFP news agency reports. According to her employer Disclose she was wrongly arrested.
Lavrilleux wrote in 2021 based on leaked documents about the involvement of French intelligence services in the Egyptian government’s bombing of its own population. Following the publication of the articles, the French Ministry of Defense filed a complaint for ‘breach of national defense secrecy’.
Subsequent investigations by intelligence service DGSI ultimately led to her arrest this week, during which her home was also searched. Disclose spoke of an “unacceptable” attack on press freedom. Journalists’ association RSF and Amnesty International were also extremely critical of the actions of the French authorities.
Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard said it was “chilling that almost two years after revelations that France may have been complicit in the execution of hundreds of people in Egypt, the journalist exposing the atrocities is being targeted – and not those responsible.”