At least three investigations, in France and Switzerland, target Mario Brero, head of a Swiss investigation firm called ALP Services, accused of having spied on various European personalities on behalf of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This new affair began in 2023 when Mediapart published a series of articles, in partnership with the European consortium European Investigative Collaborations (EIC), accusing Mario Brero and ALP Services of working on behalf of Emirati intelligence. On the menu, according to the investigation site, transmission of information to an Emirati intelligence agent, dissemination of information to harm adversaries of the Emirates, publication of false articles attacking Qatar and movements linked to the Muslim Brotherhood...
The Muslim Brotherhood is designated by the Emirates, as by many countries in the region, as a terrorist organization. According to Mediapart, the private Swiss agency would have notably sent between 2017 and 2020 to the Abu Dhabi intelligence services the names of a thousand Europeans and more than 400 organizations supposedly linked to the Muslim Brotherhood in 18 European countries, including more than 200 people and 120 organizations in France, describing them, often wrongly, as Islamists close to the Muslim Brotherhood.
In France, this list would have notably contained, according to Mediapart, the former socialist presidential candidate Benoît Hamon, the deputy mayor of Marseille and former senator Samia Ghali, the La France insoumise party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) or the author and anti-racist activist Rokhaya Diallo.
"Prejudice"
The latter filed a complaint in August, and according to two sources close to the case to AFP on Monday, the Paris prosecutor's office entrusted a preliminary investigation to the Brigade for the Repression of Personal Delinquency (BRDP) a few months ago. .
“Justice must investigate such methods. In addition to involving illegal use of personal data, they unfairly associate Rokhaya Diallo with a group (Muslim Brotherhood) with which she has absolutely no connection
,” causing
“reputational damage”
and
“harassment,”
worries her lawyer, Me Vincent Brengarth. Another complaint was filed in mid-January in Paris by Mediapart and one of its journalists, the investigative site announced to AFP.
According to a source close to the matter, the BRDP is also seized of this complaint aimed, according to the new president of Mediapart Carine Fouteau, at
“denouncing the recording that we consider illicit (...) of one ) of our journalists, wrongly assimilated to a communicator of the Muslim Brotherhood and, in doing so, handed over to the Emirati secret services
.
“This listing unduly harms her security and reputation, as well as those of the newspaper
,” according to her.
"Cooperate"
“Mediapart has, as part of its complaint, provided the Paris prosecutor's office with an internal ALP Services document which lists the French people whose names were transmitted to the UAE authorities
,” Fouteau clarified, saying Mediapart
“in principle, ready to cooperate with the justice system in order to contribute to the manifestation of the truth and to prevent, whatever the country, such events from happening again.”
In Créteil, after another complaint filed by Sihem Souid, one of Qatar's main lobbyists in France, another preliminary investigation was opened at the end of October 2023, the Créteil prosecutor's office told AFP.
“I was horrified to learn that the UAE had supervised a destabilization operation, using an intelligence and espionage company to attack, through me, Qatar
,” Souid told the AFP, denouncing a
“hunting of (his) private life”
. His lawyer, Me Céline Astolfe, requested the appointment of an investigating judge to shed light
“on the sponsors, the perpetrators and the objectives”
in the face of
“practices of incredible violence and seriousness”
.
In Switzerland, finally, another source close to the matter told AFP that the public prosecutor of the Confederation had been investigating Mario Brero, a relative and ALP Services, since December, after reports from several administrations and complaints from the Islamologist Tariq Ramadan and the Belgian environmentalist Minister of Climate and Environment, Zakia Khattabi.
Asked by AFP, the latter's office indicated that the minister denies any link with the Islamist organization of the Muslim Brotherhood, denouncing
“fanciful and false allegations”
. Asked by AFP, Mario Brero's lawyer did not react immediately, nor did the Emirati authorities. Mario Brero had already been convicted in 2014 in France for illegally collecting information on the husband of the former boss of the French nuclear group Areva, Anne Lauvergeon.