2023-06-13 18:43:48
He is one of the main protagonists of the case of the Marianne fund. Mohamed Sifaoui, former leader of the main association implicated in this case, was expected this Tuesday at 9 a.m. before the Senate Committee of Inquiry which should shed light on the use of the fund’s grants. But a search of his home, which began in the early hours of the morning, prevented him from going to his audition. Apart from this case, who is Mohamed Sifaoui?
55 years old, this Franco-Algerian journalist claims to be an expert in anti-terrorism and a fighter for political Islam. The beginnings of this fight would be found in its origins. Born in Algeria in an “anti-colonial but favorable to France” family, he confided to Release in 2020, he says he has seen a “frenzied Islamization of Algeria” from his adolescence. “Threatened for the first time by an Islamist” at that time, he has since “stopped fighting Islamism”.
Under police protection since 2003
He began his career as a journalist in Algeria, notably working for Soir d’Algérie and as a correspondent for Jeune Afrique. Several events will push him to leave his native country. On February 11, 1996, he escaped a bomb attack on the building of Soir d’Algérie, which killed around sixty people. According to his declarations to Liberation, he would have “left five minutes before the explosion” and would remain very marked by it.
Three years later, he was indicted for having described as “criminal policy” the civil agreement that the new elected president, Bouteflika, signed with the Islamists. His investigations into certain political assassinations also earned him “genuine harassment and threats from the military”, warns the Reporter Without Borders (RSF) association. in a report. At the end of 1999, fearing for his life, he decided to go into exile in France. He has since been banned from Algerian territory.
In France, he worked for Marianne and the program Enquête Exclusive on M6, making terrorism his area of expertise. He stood out for his “infiltrations” into at-risk environments, which he recounts in his books and TV reports. In 2003, he published “My Assassin Brothers. How I infiltrated an Al-Qaeda cell in France”, a report he filmed with a hidden camera. The next day, he was placed under police surveillance because of the numerous threats he received from Islamist circles. He still is today.
Author of more than 20 books, including the pamphlet “Zemmour, a French fraud” published in 2010, Mohamed Sifaoui is regularly called upon as a figure in the fight against radical Islam. In May 2022, for example, he was called to the bar to testify at the trial of the November 13 attacks, at the request of a lawyer for civil parties, indicates Mediapart.
Implicated in miscarriages of justice
But the journalist is also known for his virulent remarks against Islamism. In 2018, he blamed Latefa Ibn Ziaten, the mother of a soldier assassinated by Mohammed Merah, to wear a veil. “His veil is that of an ideology, the ideology that killed his own son, in this case that of the Muslim Brotherhood”, he had abounded on the set of CNews. Latifa Ibn Ziaten had filed a complaint for defamation but Mohamed Sifaoui had been released in this case.
The journalist’s name also appears in miscarriages of justice. In 2008, while investigating the clandestine Asian milieu, he launched the police on a false lead in the case of Estelle Mouzin. Asian workers told him that human bones were found in a Chinese restaurant in Brie-Comte-Robert (Seine-et-Marne). The establishment is returned by the investigators. It was actually animal bone, recalls Mediapart.
On other occasions the journalist has been accused of circulating false information. In 2021, for example, he claimed that Algeria was the most racist country in the world. The study on which he relied was not very credible, had shown an investigation by the Liberation fact-checking service. Mohamed Sifaoui then made his “mea culpa”, acknowledging a mistake.
Then it was in the field of sport that he stood out. Last year, Mohamed Sifaoui became communication director of the Angers football club, in Ligue 1. Between complicated relations with the press and supporters, and controversial positionshe left his post after six months.
Her role in the Marianne fund
It is now for the affair of the Marianne fund that he is in the spotlight. He must be understood as the former director of operations of the Union of Physical Education and Military Preparation Societies (USEPPM), created in the early 1990s and one of the 17 associations that won the Marianne fund.
As a reminder, this was launched in April 2021 after the assassination of Professor Samuel Paty by Marlène Schiappa, then Minister Delegate for Citizenship. It aimed to finance associations promoting the values of the Republic to fight against “separatism” and radical Islam on social networks.
But press revelations had highlighted an opaque management of the use of subsidies allocated to associations. And in the first place the USEPPM, which is the one that received the largest sum from this fund (355,000 euros). According Marianne’s joint investigation and of France 2, the mission entrusted to this association was to “deploy multimedia content, a positive message of re-enchantment of the values of the Republic”. The work produced was considered derisory. The money would have essentially only been used to pay up to 120,000 euros to two ex-leaders: Cyril Karunagaran and Mohamed Sifaoui.
Moreover, the General Inspectorate of Administration (IGA) had estimated, at the beginning of June, that the USEPPM had benefited from a « privileged treatment » in the allocation of funds by the Interministerial Committee for the Prevention of Delinquency and Radicalization (CIPDR), headed by Prefect Christian Gravel. The proximity between the latter and Mohamed Sifaoui is in the crosshairs of the IGA, which estimated in its report that the call for projects “was neither transparent nor fair”. Especially since, as noted Mediapartthe USEPPM did not specialize in topics related to secularism or religious radicalization.
“He has always said it, he has nothing to be ashamed of in this affair”, continues to hammer Mohamed Siafoui’s lawyer, Me Benaiem. His hearing before the Senate inquiry committee was postponed until Thursday. Tomorrow, he is summoned before the financial investigators of Oclciff for a free hearing, following the search of his home this morning.
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