Bonum Certa Men Certa

Battistelli's Bodyguard, Part II: Fishing Expedition for Sources in the Alexandre Benalla 'Underworld' Scandal

Protecting criminals from those who expose them

Control Risks



Investigation Unit



Summary: An utter lack of respect for the privacy of the media and of its sources, in the name of protecting the privacy of those convicted of crimes, as seen in France just like the European Patent Office

THIS is the second part of a series of 5 (part one here) regarding the Benalla affair. Benalla had worked clandestinely at the European Patent Office (EPO) before the so-called 'Benallagate' broke out.



As it turns out, France is now mimicking the EPO modus operandi. The EPO hired a dodgy private firm to help spy on the staff, as we noted in:



The next translation comes from a reader, who read "Mediapart s'oppose à une perquisition de ses locaux dans l'affaire Benalla" and put it all in English as follows:

Mediapart opposes a search of its premises in the Benalla case



The leaders of the information site say they refused a search conducted in the context of an investigation for a restriction of Benalla's privacy.

The Paris Public Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation into "restriction of privacy" and the conditions for recording a conversation between Alexandre Benalla and Vincent Crase in late July, after its broadcast last week by Mediapart, it was reported on Monday from a judicial source.

The online media reported that on Monday morning it refused a search of its premises, where two prosecutors and investigators who wanted to seize the recordings in question as part of this procedure came forward. "There are diligences to find our sources, it is a particularly worrying situation," denounced Fabrice Arfi, co-responsible for the online newspaper's surveys, to AFP.

Mediapart had published on Thursday excerpts from a recording of a conversation between Alexandre Benalla, Emmanuel Macron's former advisor, and Vincent Crase, former LREM employee and reservist gendarme.

According to the news website, this conversation took place on 26 July, a few days after the two men were indicted for violence against demonstrators on 1 May 2018 and in violation of their judicial control.

The judicial source specified that the opening of the preliminary investigation, which also concerns the "unlawful possession of devices or technical devices likely to enable the interception of telecommunications or conversations", took place following the receipt by the Paris prosecutor's office of "elements", the nature of which has not been specified.

A source close to the investigation added that it was not triggered following a complaint from Alexandre Benalla.

"As we are in the context of a preliminary investigation, we have the right to refuse a search and we have therefore obviously refused it, allowing us to comment on this unprecedented situation in the history of the newspaper, and which we consider particularly serious for the newspaper," also explained Fabrice Arfi.



Previously in the Benalla affair in relation to the EPO:

  1. Alexandre Benalla, Macron's Violent Bodyguard, Was Also Battistelli's Bodyguard
  2. It Wasn't Judges With Weapons in Their Office, It Was Benoît Battistelli Who Brought Firearms to the European Patent Office (EPO)
  3. Benoît Battistelli Refuses to Talk to the Media About Bringing Firearms to the EPO
  4. Guest Post on Ronan Le Gleut and Benalla at the French Senate (in Light of Battistelli's Epic Abuses)
  5. The Man Whose Actions Could Potentially Land Team Battistelli in Jail
  6. French Media Confirms Alexandre Benalla Just One of Six Battistelli Bodyguards, Employed at the Cost of €8,000-€10,000 Per Month (for Benalla Alone!)
  7. Corrupt Battistelli Paid a Fortune (EPO Budget) for Outlaw/Rogue 'Bodyguards' From Firm Linked to Russian Oligarch Iskander Makhmudov


The next part will be published either later today or tomorrow.

Recent Techrights' Posts

People Used to Talk
If pets can live a measurably happy life without gadgets and "apps", why can't humans?
Rust is Starting to Seem More Like Microsoft-hosted "Digital Maoism", Not a Legitimate Effort to Improve Security
Maybe this is very innocent, but they seem to have taken a solid, stable program from a high-profile Frenchman and looked for ways to marry it with GitHub, i.e. Microsoft/NSA
 
Gemini Links 08/05/2025: Practical Gemini Use Case, Shutdown of the Blanket Fort Webring
Links for the day
Links 08/05/2025: "Slop Presidency", US Government Defunds Public Broadcasting
Links for the day
Lasse Fister, Organiser of Libre Graphics Meeting, Points Out the Code of Conduct is Likely Violated by the Same People Who Promote Codes of Conduct (and Then Bully Him Into Cancelling a Keynote)
I am starting to see Lasse Fister as another victim
LLM Slop Attacks Not Only Sites of Free Software Projects But Also Bug Reporting Systems (Time-wasting, in Effect "DDoS")
Microsoft, the leading purveyor and promoter of slop, is a cancer
The Richard Stallman (RMS) "European Tour" Carries on In Spite of the Nuremberg Incident
Some people spoke about how they saw yesterday's talk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 07, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 07, 2025
The CoC Means the Founder of GNU/Linux Cannot Talk and a 72-Year-Old Man With Cancer is Somehow a "Safety" Risk?
Those who don't like RMS are not forced to attend his talks
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: A Shopping Spree and Digital Gardening
Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: Pegasus Guilty and a Path Towards EU Without Russian Energy
Links for the day
Outsourcing GNU/Linux to Microsoft GitHub Promoted by Microsoft LLM Slop and Army Officers
Something doesn't seem right
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part III: No More Media Lawsuits From Brett Wilson LLP This Year, One Can Only Guess Why
People leak a lot of material to Techrights because they know, based on the track record, that the sources will be protected and whatever gets published will stay online, in full, no matter how stubborn an effort (even lawsuits and blackmail) will be sent its way
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: Adopting GrapheneOS, Further Enshittification of Flickr
Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: CISA Gutted, Debt-Saddled (Likely Insolvent) 'Open' 'AI' (Proprietary Slop) Faking Its Financial State Again
Links for the day
Finland, Lithuania, and Latvia Fortify Their Digital Border With GNU/Linux
This month's data from statCounter is particularly interesting near the Baltic Sea
The European Patent Office (EPO) Has a Very Profound Corruption Issue, Far More Urgent an Issue Than Pronouns
a rather long document
Richard Stallman Gives Public Talk at Technical University of Liberec, Czech Republic
"For programs that you could run, and for network services that could do your own computing, under what circumstances is it reasonable to trust them?"
Today We Turn 18.5
The eighteenth "and a half" anniversary
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 06, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 06, 2025
Microsoft Finally Admits That XBox is ****
In this case, "enshittification" is an understatement
Another Wave of Microsoft Layoffs Comes Shortly. Microsoft Propaganda Sites and Slopforms Powered by Microsoft LLMs Already Spew Out Face-Saving Nonsense.
Based on last month's leak, some very extensive layoffs are now imminent [...] Perhaps we can expect a lot of noise, some of it spewed out by bots, to distract from or belittle the impending mass layoffs
Ubuntu Becomes Microsoft GitHub, Based on Decision Made by British Army Officer
You're hopeless, Canonical
Slopwatch: Microsoft Slop, Anti-Linux Slop, and IBM Marketing Itself as a Slop Company
Microsoft-controlled LLM spewing out garbage about "Linux"
Links 06/05/2025: Microsoft's Assassination of Skype After Years of Failure, Slop Hallucinations Are Getting Worse
Links for the day
Links 06/05/2025: Changing Places and StarGrid for PalmOS
Links for the day
Windows and Microsoft Causing Serious Data Breaches, Media Rushes to Blame That on "Linux" Somehow
While selling us some rusty old propaganda about how moving to Microsoft GitHub (Rust) will improve security
Making Site Archives More Easily Accessible (Approaching 50,000 Blog Posts)
Efforts to censor us have always backfired badly
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part II: Hiding Behind Lawyers and Barristers Who Lack Standards so as to Engage in Classic Corporate Extortion
They're trying to scare people and they misuse their licence to operate
Links 06/05/2025: LLMs/Chatbots Attract More Scrutiny (Getting Worse Over Time), PwC Has Many Layoffs
Links for the day
Thanks for listening. How can this Morse feed be further improved?
Right now any and all feedback on the audio would be helpful
statCounter: Bing's Market Share Lower Right Now Than It Was When LLM Hype Began (With "Bing Chat")
If anybody gains at Google's expense in search, it is BRICS' alternatives such as Yandex
Gemini Links 06/05/2025: Failure and Proxmox Cluster
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 05, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, May 05, 2025