Macron’s France: Master in the art of double standards and selective outrage Opinion by Aziz Boucetta

Morocco World News features an article by Aziz Boucetta on Paris' double standards. Caliber.Az reprints the piece.

In a recent conversation with a French Senator, the satirical weekly Le Canard enchaine reported on September 20, that President Emmanuel Macron said he would “never forgive” Morocco for supposedly eavesdropping on him with the Pegasus spyware.

Morocco, to be sure, had vehemently denied the accusation of espionage and had attempted to take legal action against the collective of newspapers that had first reported or relentlessly promoted the allegations of its use of Pegasus to eavesdrop on President Macron and other French personalities. But the French judiciary dismissed Morocco's lawsuit on the grounds that “a state cannot sue a newspaper.”

Let’s now hope that, as the French government grapples with accusations that it sold the Predator spyware (also known as Cerebro or Eagle) to “autocratic states,” French judges will have the courage to reject any legal action the Macron government might attempt against the collective of newspapers, including Mediapart, that exposed this high-level collusion between France's security and political establishment and a number of “autocratic” governments. In other words, if France denies the reports and tries to go to court, will the French judiciary maintain that a state cannot sue a newspaper?

Whatever happens in this case, the fact remains that there is an increasing new trend in Western journalism where journalists are turning into investigators and prosecutors who are eager to search for, dig into, cross-reference, expose, and publish “interesting” or “bombshell” content. Although what is often reported in such “news articles” or “investigative reports” is not always the truth, it’s often unprovable.

As a result, it's up to the accused organizations or states to vehemently deny, go to court, and exonerate themselves. In this case of spyware sold by France since 2017 to “authoritarian countries” and/or countries under military embargo, Paris seems to have distanced itself from any scandal by resisting the temptation to make an official statement. Behind the scenes, however, there are reports that the investigation of this case has been blocked by the Attorney General and the Minister of the Economy.

Even more revealing is the fact that Mediapart is the only French publication to be a member of the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) network. One cannot help but wonder why leading publications such as Le Monde, Liberation, Le Figaro, and Marianne are not members of this continental body whose mission is to promote investigative reporting and protect journalists from surveillance or interference by governments and large technology companies.

Regarding the business of eavesdropping and espionage, it goes without saying that the most surprising thing is not the work of the intelligence services -- which, as their name suggests, gather information -- but the treatment that a powerful country reserves for another, less powerful country.

So when it was revealed in 2013 that President Obama was revelling in the information provided to him by his intelligence services, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande timidly expressed their displeasure with the US. But when the eavesdropping suspicions turned to Morocco, President Macron -- and the French press -- was eager to fume, point fingers, and completely disregard Morocco’s denials.

Yet the same French press is now oddly silent or strangely inaudible on the Predator/Cerebro case. To put it mildly, the French state and media are masters of the art of double standards, and they are even greater masters of the art of selective outrage.

But what, for the sake of clarity and proper contextualisation, is the Predator/Cerebro story all about? What you need to know is that according to the Mediapart -- and EIC consortium -- revelation, Emmanuel Macron’s France has been selling spyware to countries like Angola, Libya, Syria, Vietnam and other ruthless regimes. This was apparently done with the approval, blessing, and even encouragement of President Macron and some of his closest aides, including Alexandre Benalla. Before he got publicly disgraced for beating up a young protester, Benalla was Macron's most reliable handyman.

This means that, for these spyware sales operations, Benalla acted in concert with the Elysee Palace, all while being carried out in an incredible financial whirlwind of company acquisitions, a plethora of corporate identities, and a flood of spyware acquisitions by acquiring patent-holding companies. The EIC’s investigation on this matter is highly edifying.

In short, Paris has maintained unofficial ties with regimes that it has criticized in official statements. Paris supported these bloody regimes and even provided them with tools to improve their repression, in violation of rulings by the International Criminal Court (ICC), the UN, and the broader “international community.”

One of the most striking examples, detailed by the EIC collective, is the French collaboration with Marshal Haftar, the head of the Libyan National Army based in Benghazi, eastern Libya. Haftar was suspected of war crimes by the ICC prosecutor in 2014 and was excluded by the UN Security Council in 2015 from the coalition that formed the UN-recognized Government of National Accord in Tripoli.

Nevertheless, President Macron hosted Haftar with great fanfare in July 2017, with France’s then-Foreign Minister (and former Defense Minister) Jean-Yves Le Drian going as far as to wish the Libyan warlord “victory.”

This was in 2018, a year before Haftar launched an offensive in western Libya against the legitimate government recognized by the United Nations, leaving behind after his departure the American missiles that France had bought from the United States and delivered to Haftar’s troops. According to the EIC investigation, France delivered in 2020 its wiretapping and Internet spying equipment to the Haftar camp, again through highly complex legal and financial arrangements.

And when the French courts took up the case, while Libya was under an embargo on arms sales and Khalifa Haftar was still under investigation for war crimes, the anti-terrorist prosecutor and the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, refused in every possible way to support and protect the investigators. Instead, they protected the illegal sellers of such sensitive, highly restricted -- or even prohibited -- equipment.

So, because the French media isn’t asking questions in this case and instead seems to be looking the other way, it’s reasonable to wonder about this media silence, the high-level complicity/protection by the French state of illegal activities within France and in international law; why did the sellers, Nexa and Intellexa, feel the need to hide behind a screen of companies and establish themselves in several European and Gulf countries?

How can one explain that all of this, still according to the EIC, happened with the full knowledge of President Macron and some of his closest associates? Why did France’s counter-terrorism prosecutor, who was proposed and strongly supported by the government, obstruct the investigation into the sale of prohibited equipment to the camp of a potential war criminal? Why did the Economy Minister not take the necessary steps to allow this investigation to run its course? Why is the Elysee Palace not saying anything, and why is nobody asking it anything?

The EIC’s extensive investigation reveals a wide range of irregularities and complicity by the French government, unofficially acting in various ways with several companies across multiple countries. These are mafia-like operations, which would have been difficult to attribute to the French state without the revelations from this investigation.

And, even more surprising, at least for those who still believe in the relevance and objectivity of the French media, the silence of the newspapers, especially Le Monde, which recently published an article on Predator Files. Strikingly, however, the author of Le Monde article on this highly sensitive topic did not even bother to mention French complicity and chose instead to single out Madagascar and blame it for all the woes of the world.

Why did the French media not get involved or show interest in the consortium of newspapers that conducted the investigation? Either this type of collaboration is not credible, and if that’s the case, what is the value and relevance of past investigations? Or this kind of investigative journalism is relevant, and in that case, the absence or lack of interest of the French media in the EIC should tell us something essential, decisive, about their mastery of the art of double standards and selective indignation. Clearly, the current French media and political class are an embarrassment to the great and respectable nation that France used to be.