The French authorities are determined to identify the source of leaked documents on Operation Sirli, which shed light on the dark side of counter-terrorism cooperation between Paris and Cairo. The journalist who revealed this scandal in 2021, Ariane Lavrilleux, an employee of the investigative website Disclose, was taken into custody mid-afternoon on Tuesday, September 19, at the headquarters of the Marseille police.
Her home in Marseille had previously been searched by agents of the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI). The procedures come as part of an investigation into possible compromising of national defense secrecy and revealing information that could lead to the identification of a protected agent. The investigation was opened in July 2022.
"The aim of this latest episode of inadmissible intimidation against Disclose journalists is clear: to identify our sources who made it possible to reveal the 'Sirli' military operation in Egypt," said the investigative media outlet. Reporters Without Borders also condemned the detention of Lavrilleux and search of her home. "We fear that the DGSI's actions may undermine the confidentiality of sources," said the press freedom NGO on X (formerly Twitter).
Sirli is the name of an anti-terrorist operation carried out by the Egyptian army, with French support, in the second half of the 2010s. This mission is suspected of having caused the death of numerous civilians in air strikes in the desert area straddling Egypt and Libya. The hundreds of confidential documents emanating from the French foreign ministry and secret services, which were disclosed in November 2021 by Disclose and whose authenticity has never been contested by Paris, point in this direction.
These documents show that, from 2016 onwards, an aerial surveillance aircraft operated by agents of the Directorate of Military Intelligence tracked down jihadist infiltrations in the Egyptian-Libyan border zone. These flights were carried out on behalf of the Egyptian army as part of the security cooperation between Paris and Cairo, at a time when Libya was in the grip of great instability.
If the confidential reports published by Disclose are to be believed, the operation was gradually diverted from its anti-terrorist objective by the Egyptian authorities, for purposes of internal repression. The data provided by the French aircraft were allegedly exploited by the regime of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi to target networks of arms, drug and migrant trafficking.
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