How Egypt hijacked French anti-terrorism military aid to target trafficking networks – archyworldys

These are revelations which come to raise the leaden cover posed on the military cooperation between France and Egypt and give an idea of ​​the possible drifts of a relation considered as strategic by the two countries.

According to information published Sunday, November 21 by the media Disclose, a clandestine aerial reconnaissance mission of French military intelligence, initially planned to contribute to the fight against terrorism in the border region between Libya and Egypt, would have been diverted from its primary objective, in the sight and knowledge of the French authorities . It would have allowed the Egyptian authorities, between 2016 and 2019, to carry out a number of strikes against ordinary networks of arms, drug traffickers or migrants, which resulted in many deaths. “Civilians”, according to Disclose.

According to the online media, which is based on several documents classified defense secret mainly from the military intelligence department (DRM), this mission called “Sirli” was put on track on July 25, 2015, during ‘a meeting in Cairo between the then defense ministers of the two states: Jean-Yves Le Drian, for France, and Sedki Sobhi, on the Egyptian side. The aim was to secure the border between Egypt and Libya, a country in chaos at the time, four years after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi. The world could not verify these documents from an independent source but, in France, the Ministry of the Armed Forces did not dispute their authenticity.

According to these documents, it was in February 2016 that a French team was sent to the Egyptian Western Desert, a huge area stretching from the Nile Valley to the Libyan border. The team, which operates from the Egyptian military base in Marsa Matruh, a town on the Mediterranean coast, is made up of ten agents: four soldiers and six former army personnel who have been converted into civilians – two pilots and four analysts. These are made available by a private Luxembourg company, CAE Aviation, which is used to working with French intelligence. It is this company which leases from the French army the equipment necessary for the mission: a light surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft (ALSR) of the Merlin III type, equipped with electromagnetic interception equipment.

Paris defends its strategic partnership with Cairo

In principle, this intelligence work should be limited to the fight against terrorism. This implied that the data collected by the aerial surveillance mission would be cross-checked. The aim was to ensure that the pick-ups located in the desert by the French twin-engine aircraft did indeed contain armed militants. However, according to Disclose, the Egyptian army quickly used French intelligence to tackle contraband, which abounds in this region. The inhabitants of the oases of the Western Desert smuggle weapons as well as cigarettes, gasoline and drugs.

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