CAIRO -

Last month, Egyptians followed up on the controversy sparked by leaks about the details of French technological aid to the Egyptian authorities. Some saw it as the "password" for the arrest of many activists, human rights defenders and opponents, regardless of their location since 2014 until today, while others called for the French government to be prosecuted. for its involvement in human rights violations.

In serial episodes, the Surveillance Disclose website, which specializes in revealing scandals of the French armies, revealed many intelligence and security secrets between Egypt and France, which helped Cairo carry out military operations that claimed many lives, and other security operations that led to arrest, torture and imprisonment. Thousands of Egyptians, whether opponents, human rights researchers, journalists, or labor activists.

The beginning was the disclosure of the French intelligence mission "Cirly", which began in February 2016, and the Egyptian authorities used it to launch air strikes against smugglers and civilians, not to combat "jihadists" as the mission states, and this led to the death of large numbers of people, without any movement French against these operations, despite informing the officials.

According to the French leaks, a huge cyber surveillance system set up by 3 French companies with the approval of the French authorities and the support of the UAE at the time, helped the Egyptian regime “unprecedented acts of repression of society, as the regime arrests nearly 65 thousand people, and caused the disappearance of 3 thousand others. after their arrest.

An eyewitness and a call for prosecution

One of the witnesses to the harm of citizens from tracking and eavesdropping devices confirmed in statements to Al Jazeera Net that these devices and programs played a dangerous role in the arrest of many. Which allowed French companies to sell such devices without requiring human rights standards, as he described it.

Political and human rights activist Atef Abdel Rahman pointed out that he had witnessed the damages of spyware in many national security reports in cases of politicians. In one investigation, it was mentioned that the tracking was done through a Facebook page and in another by tracking the phone number, explaining that these tools have been in existence since Years before Egypt acquired modern spyware, the new programs are more sophisticated and accurate.

Atef - a lawyer who resides outside Egypt - held successive French governments responsible for arresting and torturing thousands of citizens, because French companies sold spyware and devices to Egypt, knowing that they would be used illegally to harass civil society and hunt down opponents and unwanted people or in their activity from Whatever kind, calling for the prosecution of those companies and the French government.

Prosecute those responsible and stop cooperating

In turn, the journalist and human rights activist Haitham Abu Khalil called for suing the French companies and government for selling modern surveillance technology to the Egyptian authorities, "despite Western human rights recommendations not to sell any tools to the Egyptian government that can be used to suppress civil society, but unfortunately those recommendations were ignored." ', as described.

The director of the Victims Center for Human Rights indicated, in statements to Al-Jazeera Net, that many well-known opposition figures were arrested with the so-called "voice imprint", but France went even further by honoring Egyptian officials for its personal interests, adding that "this is an extension of Paris's policy of The two faces, which have a long and horrific history of committing massacres against Africans and Arabs until today,” as he put it.

The irony of the matter, according to Abu Khalil, is that despite the French government’s knowledge of what he described as “the catastrophic results of cooperation, both intelligence and security, with the Egyptian regime since 2014, which resulted in the killing, arrest and torture of thousands of Egyptians,” the French support did not stop, and this means that Paris is not She is concerned with the lives of those who died because of them, nor with their lives, or those who are alive in the depths of prisons, and this is a greater crime.

He called for things to proceed in two parallel lines: the first is the prosecution of those involved, and the second is the need for France to immediately stop providing security and logistical support to the Egyptian regime.

Electronic traps for the opposition

For his part, political analyst Mohamed El-Sayed Ramadan described France’s role in supporting Egypt’s intelligence and security “by complicity in the imprisonment, torture and killing of thousands of innocent civilians, which has long slandered us by talking about human rights, the right to life and freedom of expression, and has become an essential partner, whether through the sale of listening devices and spying.” The Egyptians should or provide intelligence to launch air strikes against smugglers, not militants, and despite the knowledge of those responsible for the misuse of information, successive presidents preferred to ignore the matter.”

Ramadan, the editor-in-chief of "Al-Ahrar News" and a resident of France, confirmed that the listening devices helped the Egyptian authorities and facilitated their work and enabled them to violate the rights of citizens. With the approval of the French authorities, who hoped to succeed in concluding the first deal for Rafale planes with the Egyptians, which they later achieved.

He pointed out that the three companies - including one of the companies affiliated with the giant Dassault company for military industries - formed an integrated team to create a huge espionage and tracking system, which helped the security services in Egypt to pursue and trap thousands of civilians, and it was like electronic traps, or "cloud" traps that undermined All political activities since 2014 in an accelerating, sharp and harsh manner.

France is a partner in the repression

Commenting on his country's role in these military and security operations, French researcher Francois Burga told Al Jazeera Net, "Unfortunately, France has been a partner in the repression that has been taking place in Egypt for years now without any shame, and what was revealed will not lead to any justice."

Borga - a researcher at the French National Authority for Scientific Research in Aix-en-Provence - criticized his country's policy, which ignores one of the most important principles of freedom and freedom of expression in France, and its choices have become more right-wing, and greatly damaged the country's image by supporting dictatorial regimes in the Middle East.

He stressed that what matters most to the French government is the presence of a buyer for its Rafale military aircraft and weapons, and that the rhetoric of criminalizing political Islam in those countries is consistent with the political discourse inside France and helps it in its internal elections.

He expressed his regret that France's foreign policies towards the Third World do not move a finger in the corridors of French politics and media except to a small extent, because the general trend is towards resisting and attacking everything that is Islamic under the pretext of confronting the extremist Islamic political currents, which the countries of the region themselves are hostile to.

Investigations and convictions

Returning to the leaks published by the French website, the three companies are NexaTechnologies, ICCROM-Suneris, a subsidiary of Thales, and the third is Dassault Systèmes, the technology branch of Thales. The manufacture of French heavyweight weapons and the manufacturer of the Rafale aircraft.

The last piece of this massive espionage build was a super-powerful search engine called Exalead made by Dassault System that enabled different databases to be linked together on behalf of the Egyptian regime's shadowy Military Intelligence Service (MID).

The management of "Nexa Technologies" stated that the French justice system has opened since 2017, a judicial investigation against Nexa and its management for "complicity in acts of torture and enforced disappearance" in Egypt and Libya.

On October 12, she was charged with complicity in torture and enforced disappearance in Egypt between 2014 and 2021.

On June 17, Stéphane Salles and Olivier Bohbot were indicted, and Dassault and ICCROM have so far chosen a strategy of silence.