It is an extremely rare trial which starts on Monday, worthy of a spy film: two ex-French secret agents suspected of treason after being returned by the Chinese services are tried before the special assize court in Paris. Pierre-Marie H. and Henri M. appear in particular for "delivery of information to a foreign power", "attack on the fundamental interests of the nation", "intelligence with a foreign power". These two men, who worked for the Directorate General for External Security (DGSE), the French spy service, face fifteen years in prison.
The former agents were indicted and remanded in December 2017, when they were already retired. Pierre-Marie H. has since been released under judicial supervision. His wife, Laurence H., will also be judged, in particular for “concealment of property from intelligence with a foreign power likely to harm the fundamental interests of the nation”. They appear before a special assize court, composed entirely of professional judges. But this ultra-sensitive file will probably be judged behind closed doors because of the risk of breach of secrecy.
For which country?
When the case was revealed in May 2018, French authorities spoke of an "extremely serious" case. The two suspects are "suspected of having committed acts likely to be qualified as acts of treason (...) and likely to call into question the secrets of national defense", said the Minister for the Armed Forces, Florence Parly.
The Defense Ministry then assured that the DGSE itself had detected the leak and "brought these facts to the attention of the Paris prosecutor on its own initiative". But the authorities remained very elusive about the facts and did not even say for the benefit of which country the agents would have betrayed.
Liaison with the interpreter
The two accused have, according to several media, spied on French foreign intelligence on behalf of Beijing. The two men rubbed shoulders with counterintelligence at the DGSE. In 1997, Henri M. was appointed official representative of the DGSE in Beijing, where he held the position of second secretary to the embassy. But he was recalled to France in early 1998, after having started a liaison with the Chinese interpreter of the ambassador. He retired a few years later and returned to China in 2003, where he married the former interpreter, with whom he settled on the island of Hainan, in southern China.
Why were they arrested so late? According to a good expert on the file, there was a flaw in the DGSE and Henri M. was not watched for years after his retirement.
The context of the 1990s
Pierre-Marie H. was arrested at Zurich airport with cash after meeting a Chinese contact on an island in the Indian Ocean. He has never been posted abroad. But in addition to counterintelligence, it went through the surveillance of mass organizations, including the unions. How are the two men linked, beyond the shadow of China? There are many hypotheses but one thing is certain: they had been under surveillance for several months when they were arrested.
Franck Renaud, journalist, author of the book Les Diplomates (éd. Nouveau monde, 2010) on the Quai d'Orsay, in which he mentioned the case of Henri M., highlights the context "very heavy between France and China in the 1990s, ”after Tiananmen and the Taiwan frigate affair. "This is a case that posed a lot of problems for the DGSE, which had to bring back eyes and ears from the device it had installed in China," explained Franck Renaud to AFP.
The verdict will be released on July 10.
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- Florence Parly
- China
- Trial
- Spying
- Justice