Have the French authorities tried to rewrite the narrative after the tragedy off the northern French coast on November 24, 2021? That night, at least 27 people drowned after their boat capsized during a Channel crossing to the UK from Dunkirk.

This shipwreck – the worst ever to have occurred in the English Channel – is now the subject of a judicial investigation. In addition to the smugglers' responsibilities, the judicial authorities are investigating suspicions of failure to assist a person in danger on the part of the French rescue services. The recordings of the many calls for help made by the boat's passengers that night have proved damning for the military from the Regional Maritime Surveillance and Rescue Operational Center (CROSS) in Gris-Nez, who sent no rescue teams to save them.

On November 18, 2022, just as Le Monde had revealed the content of these calls and the investigation was ongoing, French radio station Europe 1 published information about the "controversial profile" of the marine rescue operator who handled some of these calls, Fanny R. She was said to be one of the rescue operators who monitored the boat's perilous situation and didn't send help, while assuring the castaways that rescuers were on their way. "You can't hear me, You won't be saved. Your feet are in the water, bah. I didn't ask you to go," she said, as the people on board multiplied their distress calls, relayed by the British rescue services.

The radio station revealed the "troubled" past of Fanny R., who, having converted as a teenager, was said to have been monitored by the territorial intelligence services with regard to radical Islam and registered from 2015 to 2019 in the FSPRT (report processing file for the prevention of radicalization of a terrorist nature). An anonymous source was also quoted, lamenting "the difficulty of recruiting within the navy," which allegedly leads to favoring quantity "to the detriment of quality."

In a summary report attached to the proceedings and read by Le Monde, the investigating gendarmes expressed surprise that this information had leaked out. "The elements put forward by the journalist [from Europe 1] are not part of the initial investigation," they said. They pointed out that the FSPRT was "reserved for intelligence service investigators," and wondered if "the CROSS, the North Sea Channel Maritime Prefecture and the French Navy have any interest in drawing attention to [navy] personnel."

The disclosure of elements of Fanny R.'s private life could be part of a diversionary tactic designed to prevent the investigation into the shipwreck from turning into a legal case against the French authorities, who were aware of the lack of human and material resources for the rescue operation, and whose strategy, until November 2021 and according to elements of the investigation, consisted in waiting on certain occasions for the boats to pass through English territorial waters, before passing the buck to their British counterparts.

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