FIDH and LDH publish a report today on the major developments in the Amesys case. More than three years after filing a complaint against the French company, our organisations urge the courts to speed up their judicial investigations and take concrete steps to meet the Libyan victims’s need for justice. Everything should be done to conclude the investigative phase as quickly as possible.
“The examining magistrate specialised in international crimes in charge of the case at the Paris Tribunal de grande instance, heard the five civil plaintiffs in June and July 2013. They have put all their hope in the French courts to obtain recognition of their right to truth, justice and reparation”, said Patrick Baudouin, the Libyan victims’ lawyer and FIDH Honorary President.
“We expect the French courts to act faster in this case which seeks to establish the criminal liability of a French company”, added Michel Tubiana, lawyer and Honorary President of LDH.
This case was opened after FIDH and LDH filed a complaint in October 2011 against Amesys, a French company, for complicity in acts of torture by supplying the Gaddafi regime with the surveillance equipment needed for the repression of political opponents and the population as a whole.
The facts
When Tripoli was liberated, on 29 August 2011, journalists from the Wall Street Journal entered the building where the Libyan regime monitored communications. They found manuals written in English carrying the logo of Amesys, a French subsidiary of the Bull Group.
In 2007 Amesys had entered into an agreement with the government of Libya to make technology available for the purpose of intercepting communication, data processing and analysis. Agreements for technological cooperation, and more particularly software installation, meant not only making material available but also included a phase of development, assistance and monitoring to the Libyan security services.