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November 2, 2013 were murdered in Mali our confreres. Six years later, the association Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon's friends work daily to preserve their memory and to reach the truth about the circumstances of their death. But not only. Interview with its president, Danièle Gonod.
RFI : Why this association ?
Danièle Gonod : After their assassination , we were all upset. We met, friends, family, wondering what it was possible to understand why this tragedy. And also to gather together, because we needed human warmth, to meet to support each other in the face of this ordeal.
We then considered creating this association by thinking that we needed to do a memory work for our two friends, and then we needed to understand and advance the justice to have the truth about the conditions of this assassination was a very powerful psychological shock, not only for families, but also for friends. The violence of this disappearance was something unacceptable to us (...)
The association then expanded to include all the people who had worked with Ghislaine and Claude, who had loved them or who simply needed to support a move against impunity for crimes against journalists . As such, it was more of a citizen approach. From fifteen people in 2014, we are today several hundred members.
What are the daily actions ?
There are two axes. On the one hand, there is the work of memory: one regularly makes information on the Facebook page of the association . For birthdays, we have set up events that remind us of our friends: shows at the House of Poetry in Paris , with artists who have supported us, such as Isabelle Carré, François Morel or the writer Marie Ndiaye, and then dancers, African musicians who have embarked on this project with us.
And then friends, who wrote last year a show called "Je me souviens", where each of us, through small anecdotes, recalled the link he had with Ghislaine and with Claude. In addition, we asked press cartoonists who drew for us. There was a traveling exhibition, " Draw not to draw a line ", presented for the first time at the House of Journalists, at FMM, at the French Institute of Dakar, at the Sorbonne, and today in the premises. of ONU.
On the other hand, there is the militant side, because the conditions of the kidnapping and this assassination remain troublesome for us. We ask ourselves a lot of questions about the investigation work that is being carried out on their disappearance: their abduction just when the Arlit hostages were released in the same region of Mali raises questions. On the very conditions of their abduction, there are problems of hours, of the intervention of this or that force, and so on.
It took a long time to be allowed to be a civil party: when the association was created, it could not be recognized as such. The legislation has changed and since June 2018, following the creation of a file, the association has been recognized as a civil party. We took a lawyer, Marie Dosé, who defends our interests in this investigation and asks questions to the examining magistrate who is in charge of this file.
Does the association have a real weight on justice ?
This is obviously our wish. We work with other civil parties. On the one hand, the people of the association solicit justice by requests for acts via his lawyer, on the other hand there are many journalists in our association.
And we urge journalists to do investigative work, which is different from the work of justice, but which can bring us important elements. Moreover, we are going to ask for the special Envoy broadcast on France 2 three years ago, the RFI survey of last July and the work done by France Inter in Secrets d'info in September.
Will the association always have a reason to be when the light will have been made on the assassination of Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon ?
It is an association that has been created around emotional ties, it was a challenge and we meet every month for six years, a monthly appointment that we hold dear, which allows us to find ourselves with always projects. The fact that we know that nine out of ten crimes against journalists go unpunished, without investigation, without research, means that this association will live beyond the resolution of the conditions of this crime.
Unfortunately, in the face of difficulties, in highlighting the reason for the state secret, we know that our work is a long-term task, that we have many years ahead of us to fight, if only in this precise case. Of course, after that, we broaden the situation of all journalists.
Our fight is a fight for two people we love, but it is a citizen fight and I think it will have to continue beyond this very specific case.
We found ourselves in a situation of blocking the investigation and political blockages that makes the association decided to participate in the Collective Secret Defense involving Ben Barka's son, Ms. Borrel the wife of the magistrate murdered in Djibouti, the daughter of Mr. Boulin , who was murdered, the people of Bugaled Breizh, etc.
In fact, we have joined together because we all, in extremely different cases in time and space, we are faced with a wall that is the reason of State. When we ask for information, we are told that the documents we request are not accessible, and we are given redacted documents. The association is therefore not only fighting the case of journalists, but in relation to the problem of state secrecy and French legislation around this state secret.