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| - Prosecutors have charged four executives at two French companies accused of aiding Libya's former strongman Moamer Kadhafi and Egyptian authorities to spy on opposition figures who were later detained and tortured, a rights group said Tuesday. The former chief of Amesys, Philippe Vannier, was charged in Paris last week with "complicity in acts of torture," according to the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), which was confirmed by judicial sources. Olivier Bohbot, head of Nexa Technologies, and two other executives were charged with "complicity in acts of torture and forced disappearances." The firms are suspected of selling internet surveillance gear to Libya and Egypt, respectively, that was used to track down regime opponents. "This is a considerable step that demonstrates that what we see every day on the ground -- the links between the activities of these surveillance companies and violations of human rights -- can be considered criminal and lead to complicity charges," Clemence Bectarte and Patrick Baudouin, lawyers for FIDH, said in a statement. London-based rights group Amnesty International welcomed the indictments as "unprecedented". "These indictments send a clear message to surveillance companies that they are not above the law, and could face criminal accountability for their actions," Amnesty Tech Director Rasha Abdul Rahim said in a statement. The FIDH had filed a complaint and investigations were opened after the deals were reported by The Wall Street Journal in 2011 as the Arab Spring protests raged in several Middle East countries. The WSJ report revealed that Amesys had provided Deep Packet Inspection technology to Kadhafi's government, allowing it to surreptitiously intercept Internet messages. Amesys has acknowledged the tech deal with Libya, made in the context of easing ties with the West starting in 2007, when Kadhafi visited French president Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris. At least six alleged victims of the spying who joined the suit as plaintiffs were questioned by French judges from 2013 to 2015. In 2017, judges turned their focus to Nexa, accused of selling an updated version of Amesys's software called "Cerebro," capable of real-time message or call tracing, to the government of Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The FIDH said judges were also investigating the sale of similar technologies to Saudi Arabia. Egypt and France have enjoyed an increasingly close relationship under the secular rule of former army general Sisi, with Cairo a key defence client of French firms. France has been repeatedly criticised by activists for turning a blind eye to rights abuses in Egypt, including the estimated 60,000 political prisoners languishing in Egyptian prisons. The latest indictments show "the urgent need for states to implement a human rights regulatory framework that governs the sale and transfer of surveillance equipment," said Amnesty's Abdul Rahim. "Until such a framework is put in place, a moratorium on the purchase, sale, transfer, and use of surveillance equipment to governments linked to human rights violations should be enforced," she added. edy/js/sjw/jh/tgb
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