Amesys,
a French subsidiary of the Bull Group
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 entered into an agreement with the government of Libya to make
technology available for the purpose of intercepting communication, data
processing and analysis.
Paris, 19
October 2011 – Today FIDH and LDH filed a criminal complaint, together with an
application to join the proceedings as a civil party against persons unknown
before the Court in Paris concerning the responsibility of the company Amesys,
a subsidiary of Bull, in relation to acts of torture perpetrated in Libya.
This
complaint concerns the provision, since 2007, of communication surveillance
equipment to Gaddafi’s regime, intended to keep the Libyan population under
surveillance.
This
complaint, which singles out a company for being complicit in grave violations
of human rights on the basis of extraterritorial jurisdiction, is considered
within the framework of the struggle against impunity, at a time when a growing
number of companies is being denounced for having provided similar systems to
authoritarian regimes.
