The Paris Court of Appeal confirmed this week (Monday) the indictment of the French company Amesys for complicity in acts of torture in the investigation into the sale of a cyber-surveillance program to the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi . Two of the company’s leaders have been charged, making the company complicit in abuses in Libya. The confirmation of the indictments of Amesys and its two leaders, which came almost ten years after the opening of the judicial investigation, “is a source of hope” for the civil parties.
This confirmation after ten years of investigations could lead to a referral to the assizes for Amesys, a subsidiary of the computer giant Bull since 2010. This week, the Court of Appeal validated the indictments of the legal person Amesys and two of its leaders, and placed under the more favorable status of witness assisted by two other people.
In 2013, a judicial investigation had been opened in Parisafter a complaint from the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the League for Human Rights. In 2021, the Amesyis company was indicted for complicity in acts of torture, as were four of its former executives. Amesys ended up acknowledging having signed in 2007, in a context of diplomatic rapprochement with France, a contract with the Libyan authorities. But according to the company, its equipment had never made it possible to monitor the whole of civil society.
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The affair broke out in 2011, when journalists from the wall street journal had discovered in the Tripoli monitoring center, documents according to which Amesys had equipped it with an internet traffic analysis system enabling it to monitor the messages exchanged there: transcripts of private conversations on the internet as well as manuals bearing the Amesys logo. Between 2007 and 2011, the company Amesys provided Tripoli with software called Eagle, which would have enabled Muammar Gaddafi’s regime to track down Libyan opponents, then imprison and torture them.
” A very good news »
Listen to Maître Clémence Bectarte, lawyer for the International Federation for Human Rights. Joined by Houda Ibrahim.
” First of all, this is very good news for the Libyan civil parties that we represent in this case.reacts Maître Clémence Bectarte, lawyer for the International Federation for Human Rights, joined by Houda Ibrahim of the Africa editorial staff. This is a case that has now been going on for more than ten years, and the Court of Appeal came on Monday to confirm the most important indictments in this case, namely those of the company Amesys and two of its former leaders. of the time.
Now, we hope that a trial will be organized before the Paris Assize Court, which would be a first for a company for complicity in acts of torture. In France, there is today a growing movement to recognize the criminal responsibility of companies for human rights violations, and we believe that it is in this sense also a very important decision because it participates in this movement of accountability economic actors for their often harmful role in human rights violations. »