Pierre Péan

Pierre Péan (born 1938 in Maine-et-Loire, France) is a renowned French investigative journalist and author of many books concerned with political scandals.

Controversy

In his 1990 book "L'Homme de l'Ombre" ("Man of the Shadows"), Péan went into great detail on Jacques Foccart, who was de Gaulle's adviser on African matters, describing him as a man of mystery and yet the most powerful person in the Fifth Republic. As a result of Péan's revelations, Foccart unsuccessfully sued for libel.

His best-seller was "Une jeunesse française: François Mitterand" in 1994, but Péan was unhappy about press coverage of certain aspects of the book. [fr icon [http://enrade.free.fr/dossier/200501dossier_mitterand_1.htm An analysis of Péan's revelations on Mitterand] ]

In 2003, Péan published "La face cachée du Monde" ("The hidden face of "Le Monde") with Philippe Cohen. The book criticised the French newspaper's editors, claiming that they had purposefully turned their backs on "Le Monde's" past ethics. In particular, they alleged that Colombani and Plenel had, amongst other things, shown partisan bias (concerning Corsica, for example) and engaged in financial dealings that compromised the paper's independence. These findings remain controversial, but attracted much attention in France and around the world at the time of their publication, not least because they impugned the analytical reliability of a paper whose emphasis is precisely on analysis and not simply straight reporting. "Le Monde's" subsequent difficulties have been attributed in part to this book.

In 2005, he published "Noires fureurs, blancs menteurs. Rwanda, 1990-1994" ("Black furies, white liars. Rwanda, 1990-1994") about the Rwandan genocide. This controversial book was an explicit attack on François-Xavier Verschave's work concerning the "Françafrique", a term connoting the specific kind of neocolonialism imposed by Charles de Gaulle and successive presidents of the Fifth Republic on the former African colonies of the French colonial empire. In his book, Pierre Péan alleges the existence of a "counter-genocide", which immediately sparked critics of his book as a revisionist attempt to alter the accepted history of the Rwanda genocide with a false comparison. [fr icon [http://www.peacecenter.sciences-po.fr/rwanda-cr.htm Seminar on Rwanda held in Paris] ]

FBI fabricated evidence against Libya

One of Pierre Péan's most significant investigations revealed how the FBI conspired to incriminate Libya for the sabotage of both Pan Am Flight 103 and UTA Flight 772. [fr icon [http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2001/03/PEAN/14934 "Les preuves trafiquées du terrorisme libyen"] ] It was published in March 2001, just after the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial had ended with the conviction of Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi on the strength of just one piece of hard evidence: a tiny fragment of a timing device manufactured by the Swiss firm Mebo.

Two years earlier, six Libyans were tried in absentia and convicted in 1999 by a Paris court for the UTA Flight 772 bombing. Péan claimed there was something wrong::"It is striking to witness the similarity of the discoveries, by the FBI, of the scientific proof of the two aircraft that were sabotaged: the Pan Am Boeing 747 and the UTA DC-10. Among the thousands or rather tens of thousands of pieces of debris collected near the crash sites, just one PCB fragment was found in each case, which carried enough information to allow its identification: Mebo for the Boeing 747 and "TY" (from Taiwan) for the DC-10."Péan went on to accuse judge Jean-Louis Bruguière of ignoring the results of an analysis by Claude Colisti of the Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire (DCPJ) – one of the world's foremost explosives experts – that the "TY" timer fragment had no trace of explosives residue, and could not therefore have been connected to the bomb that destroyed UTA Flight 772. Furthermore, neither a forensic inquiry by the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST) nor an examination by the scientific laboratory of the Préfecture de Police (PP) could make any connection between the timer fragment and the bomb. According to Péan, judge Bruguière had therefore taken at face value the word of an FBI political operative (Thomas Thurman), who had been discredited in 1997 by the US Inspector-General, Michael Bromwich, and told never again to appear in court as an expert witness, rather than accept the findings of French forensic experts. It was revealed at the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial that the British scientist, Dr Thomas Hayes, had also failed to test the Mebo timer fragment for explosives residue. Such reckless disregard for the integrity of forensic evidence is likely to have the most profound effects upon the Scottish judicial process in relation to Megrahi's second appeal against conviction. [ [http://www.guardian.co.uk/Lockerbie/Story/0,,2114463,00.html Libyan jailed over Lockerbie wins right to appeal] ]

References

*fr icon Pierre Péan, "Noires fureurs, blancs menteurs : Rwanda 1990-1994" (Mille et une Nuits, Paris, 2005) ISBN : 2842059298

See also

*Alternative theories of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103
*Hans Köchler's Lockerbie trial observer mission
*Ulrich Lumpert
*fr icon [http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?art_cle=PAN60026plainedicon0 Complaint against Péan on charges of "revisionism" following his publication of "Noires fureurs, blancs menteurs"]