July 2015. General Christophe Gomart accompanies Jean-Yves Le Drian, then Minister of Defense, on an official visit to Cairo (Egypt). Against the backdrop of arms sales, France then quietly agreed to help Egypt monitor its border with Libya, a country in chaos since the fall of Colonel Gaddafi.
>> The underside of a secret mission between France and Egypt: look at the revelations of “Complément d’études”, Thursday from 11 pm
Asked by the magazine of France 2 “Complément d’études” (in partnership with the investigation site Disclose), the former boss of the military intelligence department (DRM), the secret services of the French army, confirms during an interview organized last week the existence of this military cooperation with the Egyptians: “They wanted to ensure that there are no jihadist groups (…) arriving from Libya in particular. It is still a region that is very destabilized”, he recalls.
According to General Gomart, the two countries then sign a cooperation agreement to track down terrorists. And the military intelligence department is given a secret mission. Code name “Sirli”. “In terms of intelligence, (the Egyptians) do not have satellite imagery and not necessarily the same resources as the French army”, he explains to us.
In early 2016, aboard an aircraft equipped with communications interception equipment and a powerful camera, DRM soldiers flew over Western Egypt in search of suspect pick-ups and terrorists. The French soldiers then share their wiretaps and their images with the Egyptians. But very quickly, the men of the Sirli mission realize that their partners are only interested in traffickers and other smugglers who cross this border which runs in the middle of the desert for more than 1,200 km. Never to possible terrorists, according to the confidential documents that we were able to consult.
Above all, the French are worried from the first months of their mission. According to them, their information could be used to guide bombardments on the ground, contrary to what the agreement signed with Egypt provides. In September 2016, the DRM team thus noticed the destruction of a vehicle a few minutes after reporting it to the Egyptians. In a confidential note that we obtained, the French soldiers alerted: “The strike was most likely carried out” by an aircraft spotted in the area, and of which “the presence attests to the willingness of the Egyptian air force to use (Sirli’s) information for repressive purposes against local trafficking”, they write.
Asked about these bombings, the former boss of the DRM is categorical: “To my knowledge, no information has ever been given which then led to the execution of people.” But he immediately tempers: “That the intelligence that we provided then had consequences potentially on terrorists, I hope, or on arms traffickers or human beings: these were people who were potential fighters for the jihadists and the others were people who were ‘bad guys’. “
Christophe Gomart left the army and retired in the summer of 2017. But Operation Sirli continued under the five-year term of Emmanuel Macron.