The director general of the DGSE was proud of it and hung it on the wall of his sad office, Boulevard Mortier. A box, a pine frame, ikea way. Inside, a kalashnikov of misery. The butt pierced with a radiance, the oxidized steel, a string as a strap. She had to saw the shoulder of the mujahideen. The assault rifle inspired pity rather than fear. A copper plate like a hunting trophy: “July 22, 2010”. The raid led by the action service against an al-Qaeda camp in the Maghreb, north of Timbuktu, in the Akla desert. It was a question of freeing a 78 -year -old Frenchman, Michel Germaneau, kidnapped three months earlier by the Islamists. The operation takes place as in training with the support of Mauritanian soldiers. Technically, a flawless. Six rebels killed, no prisoner. Not a scratch of the French side. Unfortunately, the hostage was no longer there. He will be executed in retaliation, a few days later. The DGSE will suggest that he was heart and dead for lack of care. A little disinformation to hide a fiasco.
The photo of Michel Germaneau is not framed in light wood Boulevard Mortier. His corpse never found had no coffin. The Sahara is its shroud. The trophy reported to the director general of external services indicated at least that France mercilessly fights those who challenge it and that it is perilous to make it sing. This is undoubtedly why he put him under the nose of his rare visitors, often foreign colleagues.
French to forget
The Litania of the hostages began with the Françoise Claustre affair in Chad in 1974 and has never stopped for half a century. The return of the unfortunate to Villacoublay, welcomed by the president, is part of national mythology. It is the honor of the country: they were thrown into oblivion because they were French. Their jailers wanted to humiliate France or weigh on its foreign policy. Which suggests that she had one.
Today, the master-singers are no longer guerrillages or terrorist organizations but foreign governments with Embassy in Paris. Boualem Sansal and Christophe Gleizes are heavily condemned because Algeria wants to charge Emmanuel Macron his letter to King Mohammed VI recognizing rights in Western Sahara. Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris have been locked up for three years because Iran takes revenge on the military support provided to the neighboring Emirates.
The conviction of Boualem Sansal to five years in prison, when he is 80 years old and cancer, is a capital penalty
The conviction of Boualem Sansal to five years in prison when he was 80 years old and cancer is a capital sentence. Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, for three years in Evin prison, have been at the end of the roll. They may end up at the end of a rope. There is no more serious crime than being accused of espionage in favor of Israel in the aftermath of the twelve -day war which revealed how the Mossad had penetrated the mysteries of the Islamic Republic, knowing in which building, on what floor, at what time to draw its missiles to behead the army, the guardians of the revolution, the secret services. Christophe Gleizes, sentenced to seven years for having believed that a reporter could be without borders, also plays his skin, given the reputation of Tizi-Ouzou prison.
Loss of influence
That Algeria and Iran behave like vowel states should not surprise anyone. That the French authorities have systematically fucked the slippers of their leaders and that all our whining has been in vain is overwhelming.
There is worse. France has not found in the Global South, the United States, Russia or China, the intermediaries who could obtain the release of our fellow citizens. It is edifying about our loss of influence. Boulevard Mortier, it is a pack of paper tissues that must now be framed.
