The journalist was released last Wednesday after 48 hours in police custody in an investigation into her articles on a possible hijacking by Egypt of a French intelligence operation. An extremely rare coercive measure which outraged the profession.
Investigative journalist Ariane Lavrilleux is summoned this Monday morning at 9:30 a.m. to the Paris High Court to be presented before the judge of freedoms and detention (JLD), franceinfo learned from a source close to the case.
>> Journalist placed in police custody: “It’s a clear, clear and precise attack against the freedom to inform,” says Ariane Lavrilleux indignantly
After the search of the journalist’s home, then her custody, the judge will have to decide whether the seized documents can be included in the proceedings initiated against the journalist accused of disclosing a national defense secret. She is at the origin of a collective investigation for France 2 and Disclose on the dark side of Franco-Egyptian cooperation.
On Tuesday, September 19, his home was searched at 6 a.m. by nine French intelligence agents, armed with ultra-sophisticated surveillance means, including three computer cases capable of copying tons of gigadata in a few minutes. Objective: track down this journalist’s sources. Ariane Lavrilleux is today accused of divulging a national defense secret: a secret military operation, which we easily understand that the State would have liked to remain secret since it allowed the general public to discover how France , by providing intelligence to Egypt, helped it repress and bomb its population.
What protection for sources?
It is therefore the right to protection of sources for journalists and the right of citizens to be informed on questions of general interest which is at stake before the court: if a French judge decides that documents seized from a journalist can be used against her, and against her sources, who will still dare to take the risk of revealing information which deserves to be known to all? Will civil servants, state agents, pushed to speak because they can no longer remain silent, still dare to denounce the criminal acts of which they are aware? Will journalists still be able to investigate France’s foreign policy, its arms contracts, and so many other subjects?
After Ariane Lavrilleux was taken into custody, Disclose clarified last Wednesday, on X (formerly Twitter), that according to its information, “DGSI investigators accuse (the) journalist of having signed five articles on French arms sales abroad, published in the media since 2019“. During a press conference Thursday afternoon at the headquarters of Reporters Without Borders in Paris, Ariane Lavrilleux was indignant that a “new direction“was taken against the freedom to inform, denouncing a “misuse of justice services“. Furthermore, a former soldier was indicted on Thursday in Paris, suspected of having provided information to the journalist.