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Four leaders of the French companies Amesys and Nexa Technologies, accused of having provided cybersurveillance equipment to the Libyan and Egyptian regimes that made it possible to track down opponents, have been indicted, the International Federation for Human Rights announced on Tuesday ( FIDH).
The investigations into the sale of cybersurveillance equipment by the French companies Amesys and Nexa Technologies to the authoritarian Libyan and Egyptian regimes experienced a surprising acceleration last week, with the indictment of four of their leaders, in particular for “complicity in acts of torture “.
In quick succession, and while the investigations seemed dormant, investigating judges from the “crimes against humanity” pole of the Paris judicial court indicted, Wednesday June 16 and Thursday June 17, Philippe Vannier, president of Amesys until 2010, for “complicity in acts of torture” in the Libyan section, Olivier Bohbot, president of Nexa, Renaud Roques, its managing director, and Stéphane Salies, former president, for “complicity in acts of torture and of enforced disappearances “in the Egyptian section.
These prosecutions were announced in a press release from the International Federation for Human Rights on Tuesday, June 22, and confirmed by a judicial source. They intervene in two separate judicial inquiries opened following two complaints filed by FIDH and the League of Human Rights (LDH).
>> To read: The shadow of the Gaddafi regime hangs over the French company Amesys
The first investigation, opened after a dismissal of the initial complaint, aims to sell between 2007 and 2011 to the regime of Muammar Gaddafi a cybersurveillance program called Eagle, developed by Amesys. In this case, the civil parties accuse the engineering company of knowingly providing this material to the Libyan state, which used it to identify opponents, then imprisoned and tortured.
The affair had erupted in 2011, in full Arab Spring, when journalists of the Wall Street Journal had discovered that Amesys, bought by Bull in January 2010, had equipped the monitoring center of Internet of Tripoli with an analysis system. Internet traffic (DPI), making it possible to control the messages that are exchanged.
Listening system at 10 million euros
Amesys then admitted having provided Muammar Gaddafi’s regime with “analytical material” on “Internet connections”, while recalling that the contract had been signed in a context of “diplomatic rapprochement” with Libya, under the presidency. by Nicolas Sarkozy.
At least six victims, who had become civil parties, were heard between 2013 and 2015 by French judges. In May 2017, the company was placed under the status of assisted witness, intermediate between that of simple witness and that of indictment.
>> To read: Amesys returns to serve as a massive cybersurveillance tool in Egypt
The second judicial investigation, opened in 2017, aims at the sale to the regime of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi by the company Nexa Technologies, led by former Amesys officials, of the software developed by the latter and called this time – here “Cerebro”, also used to track down opponents.
The investigations were launched by a complaint from the FIDH and the LDH, with the support of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) which relied on a survey by Télérama magazine revealing the sale in March 2014 of “a listening system at 10 million euros to fight – officially – against the Muslim Brotherhood”, the Islamist opposition in Egypt.
Prevent the export of surveillance technologies
According to FIDH, this second judicial investigation was “also extended to the sale of surveillance technology to Saudi Arabia”.
“This is a tremendous breakthrough which means that what we see every day in the field, namely the links between the activity of these surveillance companies and human rights violations, can be criminalized and give rise to indictments for complicity, ”declared Clémence Bectarte and Patrick Baudouin, FIDH lawyers, quoted in the press release.
Michel Tubiana, lawyer and honorary president of LDH, for his part expressed the wish that the French authorities “resolutely undertake to take all measures to prevent the export of ‘dual-use’ surveillance technologies to countries which seriously violate human rights “.
According to FIDH, these indictments “could precede that of the two companies as legal persons”.
At the end of December, another French company, Qosmos, accused of “complicity in crimes against humanity and acts of torture” for having sold cybersurveillance equipment to the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, benefited from a non- take place, after more than eight years of investigation.
With AFP