Why is journalist Ariane Lavrilleux placed in police custody?

2023-09-20 19:09:23

►Who is Ariane Lavrilleux and why is she placed in police custody?

Independent journalist based in Marseille, journalist Ariane Lavrilleux regularly collaborates with the investigative media Disclose. In 2021, she co-signed the “Egypt Papers” investigative series, revealing a possible Egyptian diversion of a French intelligence operation in the country. Tuesday September 19 at 6 a.m., police officers from the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) began a search of her home which will last around ten hours, and placed her in police custody at the hotel Marseille police station.

An operation carried out as part of an investigation into compromising national defense secrets and revealing information that could lead to the identification of a protected agent, opened in July 2022 after a complaint against X was filed by the Ministry of the Armed Forces . According to Disclose, the investigation would cover the period from 2017 to 2022 and would concern five publications.

At 5:40 p.m. this Wednesday, September 20, the journalist was still held at the police station to continue the hearings, assisted by her lawyer. Disclose has been calling for “immediate release” and denounces a “inadmissible and unjustified deprivation of liberty”. The media estimating that “publication responsibility [lui] returns, it is the editorial staff which should have been searched as part of the investigation and not Ariane Lavrilleux”.

►What reactions did this operation provoke?

At the call of the Presse Papier and Prenons la Une collectives, of which Ariane Lavrilleux is a member, a first gathering took place on Tuesday September 19 in front of the police headquarters to demand her release, and a second should take place this Wednesday September 20 at 6:30 p.m. in several cities in France. On X (formerly Twitter), the Reporters Without Borders association expressed its fear that “the actions of the DGSI do not infringe on the secrecy of the sources”. Several journalists’ societies and unions also spoke out to support the journalist and her editorial staff, including Médiapart and France Télévisions.

#France????????: it’s been more than 30 hours since@AriaLavrilleux, who was searched, is in police custody. RSF denounces a serious attack on the principle of secrecy of sources & calls for the immediate release of the journalist from @Disclose_ngo. See you this evening in Paris????https://t.co/bRFPBUfNA3pic.twitter.com/l4F5NO8xWl

— RSF (@RSF_inter) September 20, 2023

The European Federation of Journalists has also planned to submit an alert on the Council of Europe platform for the safety of journalists in order to “force the French government to respond to an intolerable attack on press freedom”. For its part, Amnesty International France expressed its regret and concern to see that “the work of journalists investigating subjects linked to the opaque field of defense is almost systematically the subject of an investigation by the DGSI”.

Questioned by a journalist from Mediapart during the Council of Ministers this Wednesday, September 20, government spokesperson Olivier Véran preferred not to speak, considering that he did not have sufficient information.

►What does the law say about the secrecy of sources?

In France, the secrecy of sources was integrated in 2010 into article 2 of the law on freedom of the press of July 29, 1881. A protection which is not absolute, since it must be balanced with the ‘“overriding imperative of public interest”explains Christophe Bigot, lawyer specializing in press law.

In practice, this means that in order for the right to confidentiality of sources to be exercised, “the judge must consider that the interest in bringing information to the attention of the public is greater than that of the army in preserving its defense secrets.” It is this balance that the judge of freedoms seeks when he determines which documents, among those which have been seized by the police, are placed in the judicial file.