How Paris weapons Egypt in its digital war

In Egypt, the slightest word, the slightest comment posted on social networks can lead to prison.For having provided Marshal Al-Sissi with the tools allowing him to spy on his own population, Paris carries its share of responsibility.Agreements with devastating effects.

All that for a flag.For the past three and a half years, Ahmed Alaa, a 26 -year -old Egyptian, juvenile features and a tattooed crown in the neck, has lived in exile in Canada.His life switched on September 22, 2017 in Cairo: during a Mashrou’leila concert, a Lebanese and committed alternative rock group whose singer is openly gay, he brandishes a LGBT Arc-en-ciel banner.Posting on Facebook, the photo becomes viral and opened television talk shows, where he learns that he is wanted by the police.After a week of rider, plainclothes officers stop him in a taxi, the day of his birthday."They watched my phone, my social networks, impossible to escape them," said the distraught student.Incarcerated for isolation and without judgment for four months, he is accused by a prosecutor of belonging to "a prohibited group", but ends up recovering freedom."They had no reason to stop me, and no reason to free me," he said again.In Toronto, he is greeted by his friend Sarah Hegazi, arrested six hours after him for the same reason.Broken by her arbitrary detention, marked by electricity torture, she will end her days in the summer of 2020.According to the estimates of Amnesty International, sixty thousand lawyers, artists, activists, bloggers populate the Egyptian jails because of their political opinions, their civic commitment or their sexual orientation.French diplomacy formulates it itself in a confidential memo dated April 2018: Egypt no longer hesitates to "criminalize any speaking that does not comply with the official speech".However, France helps it monitor its population.

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