How Egypt’s security used French intelligence to shoot smugglers on Libya’s border

The revelations from leaked classified documents inside the French government were timed to have the maximum impact. They purported to show that Egypt’s security officers had misused French intelligence in operations that had killed around 40,000 smugglers and destroyed 10,000 vehicles on the Libyan border

Disclose, the French investigative website, broke the story on 21 November last year – the same day that Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi arrived in Paris for a three-day visit of meetings with foreign minister Jean-Yves le Drian and President Emmanuel Macron to consolidate their countries’ strategic partnership.

The following day, France’s minister of defence Florence Parly called for an investigation into reports based on leaked documents showing that data from French surveillance operations aiming to track jihadist militants had been misused by Egyptian security to target