DGSE intelligence agency headquarters
Shortly before the sacking, Bernard Emié visited Lebanon.
It has been reported that during this visit he notified Lebanese officials of Israel's intention to assassinate leadership figures of Palestinian groups living in Lebanon.
Sacked - Bernard Emié
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Related to the Gaza war, France has suddenly fired the chief of its major foreign intelligence agency, the DGSE, equivalent to the CIA or MI6.
photo, France's DGSE intelligence agency headquarters, Boulevard Mortier, Paris
https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/leparisien/UB5ZLALQTVBX7EJNAQAI3VSONI.jpg
Sacked was Bernard Emié, "former French ambassador to Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Algeria, and the French Foreign Ministry’s chief policymaker for the Arab world for several years before he was appointed to run the DGSE in 2017'.
Emié had cautioned that the interests of France are greatly endangered by aligning with Israel and the USA ...
France can possibly be cut off from Arab and African oil and energy supplies, and most of its container imports transit through the Red Sea and Suez Canal.
But Emié was also blamed for the increasing loss of French influence in Africa, its spy networks being broken up by increasingly angry French-speaking former colonies, and for weak intelligence re Russia and Ukraine.
The new head of DGSE is Nicolas Lerner, former head of French counter-intelligence DGSI, and "a childhood friend of Macron" with, however, "no direct Arab experience".
John Helmer has the story
https://johnhelmer.net/us-israel-genocide-in-gaza-is-bad-for-french-shipping-and-ports-so-macron-fires-intelligence-chief/
But Emié was also blamed for the increasing loss of French influence in Africa, its spy networks being broken up by increasingly angry French-speaking former colonies, and for weak intelligence re Russia and Ukraine.
The new head of DGSE is Nicolas Lerner, former head of French counter-intelligence DGSI, and "a childhood friend of Macron" with, however, "no direct Arab experience".
John Helmer has the story
https://johnhelmer.net/us-israel-genocide-in-gaza-is-bad-for-french-shipping-and-ports-so-macron-fires-intelligence-chief/
Shortly before the sacking Bernard Emié visited Lebanon. It has been reported that during this visit he notified Lebanese officials of Israel's intention to assassinate leadership figures of Palestinian groups living in Lebanon.
ReplyDelete" Lebanon has been warned that the Israeli Mossad intends to assassinate Palestinian officials in Lebanon, topped by Hamas senior leaders Saleh al-Arouri and Osama Hamdan and Islamic Jihad chief Ziad al-Nakhalah, diplomatic sources said.
“The threats are high and require extraordinary measures,” the sources told ad-Diyar newspaper in remarks published Friday, saying that French intelligence chief Bernard Emie had warned -- without mentioning names -- of such a scenario during his latest visit to Beirut.
“French President Emmanuel Macron relieved Emie of his duties and replaced him with Nicolas Lerner hours ago, which is a suspicious timing that indicates that Emie might have paid the price of these leaks,” ad-Diyar added."
https://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/302324-report-israel-intends-to-assassinate-palestinian-officials-in-lebanon
It had already been reported that Israel would be targeting Hamas leaders around the world and the Israeli and Western media reported on a leaked recording of the head of the Israeli Shin Bet stating that they had already launched a new program of international assassinations so it is hard to believe that alone would be the reason for his dismissal.
"A worldwide campaign of assassinations of Hamas leaders announced by senior Israel officials is likely to be counterproductive, impractical and ineffective, targets of previous such efforts have suggested.
Benjamin Netanyahu first announced the new strategy two weeks after the 7 October attacks launched by Hamas into southern Israel which killed 1,200 people.
Officials in Israel have briefed journalists that a new operation called Nili, an acronym for a biblical phrase in Hebrew meaning “the eternal one of Israel will not lie”, would target senior leaders of the militant Islamist organisation.
Last month Netanyahu told a press conference that he had instructed Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, to “assassinate all the leaders of Hamas wherever they are”. In early December a leaked recording revealed Ronen Bar, the head of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, telling Israeli parliamentarians that Hamas leaders would be killed “in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Qatar, everywhere … It will take a few years, but we will be there in order to do it.”
Bar described the assassination campaign as “our Munich”, a reference to the campaign launched by Israel after the attack by Palestinian extremists on the Munich Olympics in 1972 that killed 11 Israeli sportsmen. That effort led to at least 10 assassinations between December 1972 and 1979,"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/23/israeli-campaign-to-kill-hamas-leaders-likely-to-backfire-say-earlier-assassination-targets
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-recording-shin-bet-chief-vows-to-kill-hamas-chiefs-in-lebanon-turkey-qatar/