Two police officers, suspected of having provided him with confidential information, were also presented to an investigating judge.
Journalist Alex Jordanov, author of a book published in 2019 on the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI), was indicted on Friday June 24 for several offenses including that of “disclosure of defense secretsand placed under judicial supervision, AFP learned from a source close to the case.
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Two police officers, suspected of having provided him with confidential information, were also presented to an investigating judge with a view to their indictment, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Justice accuses the 62-year-old journalist of having given details in the book he published in 2019 “The shadow wars of the DGSI(Nouveau Monde editions) on intelligence techniques, recruitment methods, management and remuneration of human sources, among others. He is also accused of having published information likely to identify an agent or a source of the intelligence services.
At the end of his police custody which began on Wednesday in the premises of the DGSI, the journalist was presented to an investigating judge on Friday who placed him under judicial supervision and indicted for disclosing a defense secret, concealment of professional violation, concealment of violation of the secrecy of the instruction and revelation of information allowing the identification of a source. “48 Hour Custody Followed by Overnight Depot for Journalist Over Book Revelations Unprecedented“, reacted to AFP the lawyer of Alex Jordanov, Me William Bourdon.
“Double Bullying”
“This is a very serious attack on journalists’ duty to investigate. This muscular operation obviously constitutes a double political intimidation towards journalists and police officers to dissuade them from being curious or talkative.“, denounced Me Bourdon. “The rule of law under Macron II begins auspiciously“, quipped the lawyer. “The hardening represented by this operation must not escape anyone“.
In his book, Alex Jordanov reveals “the successes” and the “misfiresof domestic intelligence in the fight against terrorism during the 2010s through the stories of several DGSI officers designated by modified first names, sometimes critical of their hierarchy. According to the editor’s note, the book had “been carefully proofread by intelligence specialists so as not to interfere with the ongoing work of the services“, and “chapters covering cases still in progress (in 2019, note) have been excluded“.
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Alex Jordanov was heard in February 2020 in an open hearing by the Brigade for the repression of delinquency against the person (BRDP) of the Paris judicial police for suspicion of violation of defense secrecy. He had been briefly taken hostage in 2004 in Iraq while working at the CAPA agency and producing a subject for Canal+. According to Le Point magazine, his home was searched on Monday.
Several journalists interviewed
In recent years, other journalists have been questioned by the DGSI about their work. This was the case, in May 2019, of journalists from the Disclose site, Radio France and TMC after their investigations into the use of French weapons in Yemen. The Paris prosecutor’s office has since dismissed the investigation for “compromise of national defense secrets” but notified them of a reminder to the law.
At the same time, the journalist from Le Monde Ariane Chemin had also been interviewed by the DGSI as part of an investigation for “revelation of the identity of a member of the special forces unitsafter the publication of an article on the affairs of Alexandre Benalla revealing the identity of an air force non-commissioned officer, Chokri Wakrim. These summonses had been denounced by some twenty NGOs and trade unions as an attack on freedom of the press.
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Since then, neither Ariane Chemin nor her lawyer Christophe Bigot have had any news of the procedure, they told AFP on Friday. In the fall of 2021, the Paris prosecutor’s office opened a criminal investigation into compromising national defense secrets, after Disclose claimed, with supporting documents, that a French anti-terrorist operation in Egypt would be used for the purpose of repression. internal.
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