Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire
The idea of a government quietly assembling lists of people to be eliminated might sound like something from a John le Carré spy thriller, but in France, it’s actually documented history. In 2017, the French media outlet Le Monde published an excerpt from an investigation conducted by a reputable investigative journalist, Vincent Nouzille, which shocked even seasoned observers of intelligence affairs. The French newspaper revealed some of the findings described in Nouzille’s book, titled “Erreurs fatales“, where he explores the grey areas of the French intelligence services, and asserts that for years, France has compiled lists of individuals marked for assassination—people considered hostile not only because of acts of terrorism or kidnaping, but for operating “against France’s interests.”
According to the report, these names were submitted directly to the President of the Republic for approval. Former French President François Hollande, in interviews cited in the article, acknowledged that he himself had authorised such killings, giving his personal assent to operations conducted by the French Secret Services (DGSE) or military special forces—far from any courtroom or judicial oversight. Interestingly, French records indicate that Emmanuel Macron was an advisor to then President Hollande at Élysée Palace for two years before becoming Francois Hollande’s Minister of the Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs in 2014. Whether he was aware of such a policy is still unclear. Nonetheless, the very existence of the policy should be beyond rebuttal at this point.
The revelations from the investigation describes a clandestine apparatus capable of operating across continents, while executing missions with minimal transparency, and with absolute political discretion. Judges in France were often outraged to discover that individuals they sought to investigate had been subsequently killed without any consultation. Intelligence officials, meanwhile, defended the practice as a necessary extension of state power in a dangerous world. Whatever one’s interpretation, the reporting left little doubt: the French state has not only built the capacity for such extrajudicial action, it has actually used it.
In France, many people still vividly recall the tale of a “Freemason killer network”, which included members of the “Athanor Lodge. Their sinister actions sparked a captivating, yet deeply unsettling investigation which would uncovered a criminal organization linked directly to DGSE enforcers. Some of the individuals implicated and arrested in 2020 were operatives of the French intelligence agencies, both foreign (DGSE) and domestic (DGSI), who faced prosecution in 2023 for their roles in the attempted murder of a business leader. Other allegations pointed towards evidence of a conspiracy to kill a trade unionist, as well as several other brutal attacks, as reported by the French media outlet RTL. None of the targeted individuals were known terrorists or declared enemies of the state. Rather, they were citizens that somehow ended up on a “kill list”, treated by the state apparatus as High Value Targets (HVAs). Read more from this investigation at the French outlet Le Figaro here.
It is against this historical backdrop, one defined by secrecy, presidentially approved kill lists, and a long record of so-called “neutralisations”, that high-profile American podcaster Candace Owens’ recent allegations have landed. When she took to her X account to warn that she had been informed of an assassination plot ordered by the President of France, the claim did not land in a vacuum. It collided with the very real historical evidence that France possesses both the mechanisms and the precedent for covert lethal operations.
Owens did not deliver her warning tentatively. She has divulged how a highly placed operative within the French government had contacted her, someone she says has been verified and deemed credible. The message she claims to have received was stark: she is being targeted, the order had been approved, and an elite unit had been authorised to execute that order. From there, her posts unfolded with the urgency of someone convinced that her own life is currently in danger, asserting that she has evidence, documents, and names supporting what she has called a criminal conspiracy.
She claims that this whistleblower told her the Macrons had “executed upon and paid for” her assassination and that the operation had been assigned to a specialised GIGN team.
“Among its many
capabilities, the GIGN is also an integral part of the Air Marshal
community. As the only authorized French entity, the GIGN was one of the
nine founding members of the International Flight Security Officer
Committee (IIFSOC) network, along
with the United States, Canada, Australia, and five other European
countries. Today, this community continues to grow and now comprises
nearly twenty members. In addition to helping standardize practices
internationally, this network allows for building contacts with a
significant number of partners in case of operational needs.”
(Source: GIGN National Gendarmerie Intervention Group)
In her last post, she intimates that “Macron allegedly moved $1.5 million for her assassination”, which, according to an earlier post, transited through international accounts in France and Canada, allegedly via the infamous network of the exclusive “Club des Cent” in France, whose elite members include the likes of Eric de Rothschild.
I’ve recently shared on X some background information regarding the Club des Cent in France, which she has also reposted on her timeline.
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Owens added that a French female assassin and an Israeli operative are alleged to be part of the assassination group. She has also connected this alleged plot to the recent killing of American conservative activist Charlie Kirk, saying that her source claimed Kirk’s killer trained with the French Foreign Legion’s 13th Brigade in what she describes as “multi-state involvement.” She warned too that Xavier Poussard, a French investigative journalist and author of the book “Becoming Brigitte“, might also be a target.
Throughout her posts, she claims to have concrete evidence; documents, communications, names, and financial trails, and reiterates that she has already notified figures within the U.S. government of her situation. She also has suggested she had been advised to remain silent, but that she has refused to do so. Her message to the public seems to indicate that she sees visibility as protection.
These claims, carried by the momentum of her own certainty, merge uncomfortably with France’s known history of such clandestine operations. What France once carried out quietly in the Sahel, Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia, and other “grey zones”, as well as in Europe itself—has now been pulled into a vastly different narrative, one involving a leading American commentator who says she holds the receipts.
SEE ALSO: Past as Prologue: Safari Club Sheds Illuminates Candace Owens’ Allegations
Telegram CEO, Pavel Durov, who went through his own turbulent episode in France involving an unexpected airport arrest, to his uneasy dealings with French intelligence, and the political circles around President Macron, recently posted a message on X, where he considers Candace Owens’ claims about French involvement in Charlie Kirk’s death to be “plausible”— a reaction shaped as much by personal experience as by principle of historic precedent. By engaging in her narrative, Durov lends some additional weight to the story.
After reviewing everything Charlie Kirk has ever said about Macron’s France, I find Candace’s info about French involvement in his death entirely plausible.
— Pavel Durov (@durov) November 23, 2025
Charlie even called for 300% tariffs on France until the charges against me were dropped: https://t.co/6JLy6PzNqS 🙏 https://t.co/qm6Laz0cfI
Whether Candace’s evidence will be released, and what it might show us—remains a question only she can answer for now. However, her warnings join a long and complicated traceable lineage of covert state actions initiated by the French state—a reality which is already well-documented in the pages of France’s own newspapers of record.
Over the weekend, most mainstream French media reacted in concert, predictably calling Candace Owens a “conspiracy theorist” and a “cyberbully”, characterising her allegations as “lunar”. But, is it wise to disregard her claim just because her allegations are deemed to be too “fringe” by mainstream media standards? Perhaps it would be more prudent for us to take a moment and pause, and take into consideration that precedents which exist, and afford her the time and the appropriate setting to disclose her evidence.
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Le Monde reports…
François Hollande and “the license to kill”
In a book titled “Fatal Errors,” published today, independent journalist Vincent Nouzille recounts how France compiles lists of terrorists to be eliminated, which are then submitted to the President of the Republic for approval, even at the expense of justice. Excerpts.
Independent journalist Vincent Nouzille has spent years exploring the gray areas of the intelligence services. In Fatal Errors (Fayard/Les Liens qui libèrent, €20, 384 pages), he delves into the heart of the French counterterrorism effort and recounts, after a lengthy investigation, how, since the early 1980s, the authorities have failed to prevent the most serious attacks. Le Monde is publishing excerpts.
Extrajudicial killings ordered by the president
“Since his election in May 2012, François Hollande has sought to embody a more militaristic policy than his predecessors, even at the cost of overstepping the bounds of legality. Thus, he has decided to systematically retaliate against hostage-takings and attacks affecting French citizens worldwide. In an interview with journalists Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, he admitted to having ordered such acts of revenge: ‘The army and the DGSE (General Directorate for External Security) have a list of people suspected of being responsible for hostage-takings or acts against our interests. I was questioned. I said: “If you apprehend them, of course…”’ These remarks confirm what we wrote at the beginning of 2015, namely that France is compiling lists of names of people to be eliminated, which are subject to the president’s approval.”
Surrounded by action-oriented military advisors, including his chief of staff, General Benoît Puga, and members of Jean-Yves Le Drian’s cabinet, François Hollande gave clear instructions to the military high command and the DGSE (General Directorate for External Security) on this matter: they have his green light to kill “terrorist leaders” and other suspected enemies of France abroad, including clandestinely. The military refers to them as High Value Targets (HVTs) or High Value Individuals (HVIs) – in short, high-value targets. (…)
The president confided to Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme that he had ordered at least four targeted assassinations during his term. A minimal figure, in truth. According to our sources, at least forty targeted killings were carried out abroad between 2013 and 2016, either by the armed forces, the DGSE (France’s external intelligence agency), or, more indirectly, by allied countries based on intelligence provided by France. This represents roughly one operation per month—a rate unseen since the late 1950s, during the Algerian War. From this perspective, François Hollande marks a real break with the use of force, whereas Nicolas Sarkozy and especially Jacques Chirac were more cautious on these matters of national sovereignty.
Officially, military headquarters reject the term “targeted killings.” The military prefers to speak more generally of “neutralizing” “enemy targets” and ” strategic objectives .” They deny any prior identification of the individuals targeted. These denials reflect a certain unease, linked to ethical reservations and the legal ambiguity surrounding this type of counterterrorism operation. Indeed, in the event of a declared military conflict, endorsed by Parliament and international bodies such as the UN, special operations can be considered acts of war and the targets enemy combatants, which does not, in principle, pose too many legal problems.
Conversely, when special forces or agents of the DGSE’s Action Service (SA) intervene in “grey zones” or on the fringes of a conventional military operation, the legal framework is more uncertain: they could face prosecution in the countries concerned. The risk remains theoretical, but it must be taken into account, as missions of this type have proliferated in recent years. Between 2008 and 2013, French special forces and the DGSE, for example, captured or killed nearly a hundred jihadists in certain Sahel countries (Mauritania, Mali, Niger) without any legally launched military operation. Not to mention the raids carried out in Libya in 2011 with the utmost discretion, or the DGSE’s operation in Somalia in January 2013, deep within a “grey zone.”
In reality, France applies the law of retaliation and goes even further. This “license to kill” sometimes resembles cold-blooded reprisals and extrajudicial killings, including preemptive ones. Military strikes have little to do with judicial procedures. The legitimacy of these actions can be accepted when it comes to responding to aggression. But their legality is often questioned, as is their actual effectiveness in the fight against terrorism, since they do not prevent rebel groups from regrouping and they increase the risk of escalation. “France is at war, it kills enemy leaders, nothing could be more normal ,” argues a veteran of the DGSE (France’s external intelligence agency), a supporter of these “Homo” (for homicide) operations.
According to intelligence officials, the hunt for human targets is meticulously planned. In September 2015, speaking about these operations in an exceptional manner, General Christophe Gomart, head of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DRM), detailed the process to an audience of experts at the Defense Summer School: “Targets of interest, the leaders of armed terrorist groups, are very difficult to intercept due to their mobility and the discretion they employ. The process aims to progressively narrow down the net in order to identify and then locate the target before launching the operation. This work is conducted in partnership with other services within the national intelligence community, according to the principle we call ‘Find, Fix , Finish, Exploit’ .”
Targeting is refined using electronic intelligence, prisoner interrogations and imagery studies, which then allow for the formal identification of the target and its tracking “until the most favorable time to trigger the operation” (…).
Bernard Bajolet, the head of the DGSE (France’s external intelligence agency), provided further details on the subject. Questioned behind closed doors in May 2016 by the parliamentary inquiry commission investigating the 2015 attacks, he indicated that his agency had conducted sixty-nine operations to “thwart the terrorist threat” since the beginning of 2013. Fifty-one of these involved arrests, foiled plots, or the neutralization of terrorists in the following areas, listed in order of importance: sub-Saharan Africa, the Afghan-Pakistani region, the Horn of Africa, Syria, Europe, Libya, and Egypt. The DGSE reportedly contributed directly to forty such operations during this period, some of which were executions—the exact number of which was not specified.
Angry judges
Naturally, on instructions from the Élysée Palace, the military commands generally conduct these special operations with the utmost discretion. They are classified as “Defense Confidential” and only exceptionally result in military communiqués. The President of the Republic, the Minister of Defense, and the Chief of the Defence Staff, however, regularly wish to demonstrate that France now retaliates against any attack against its interests and relentlessly pursues those responsible in order to eliminate them. This comes at the risk of clashing with magistrates tasked with investigating terrorist acts and eager to one day bring the perpetrators to justice, as is the case, notably, in the Arlit hostage crisis, the death of Philippe Verdon, and the murders of the two RFI journalists.
Because the judges, as well as the civil parties, are deeply unhappy with the extrajudicial executions decided at the highest levels, which, according to some of them, amount to the reinstatement of the death penalty without any form of trial. In the eyes of the Élysée Palace and the military high command, on the other hand, the war against distant and fanatical enemies justifies the primacy of military operations over the uncertain recourse to the French justice system.
The In Amenas affair clearly illustrates this tension. On January 16, 2013, some thirty terrorists from the El-Mouaguiine Biddam katiba (Those Who Sign in Blood), dissidents of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, attacked a massive gas complex located in Tigantourine, about sixty kilometers from In Amenas, in southern Algeria. Hundreds of employees and expatriates were taken hostage. The Algerian army launched a raid that resulted in a terrible toll: in addition to the thirty or so attackers killed, thirty-eight civilians died during the fighting, including a Frenchman, Yann Desjeux. This former special forces soldier, who had become the site’s deputy head of security, managed to save several hostages before being executed.
Several countries of origin of the victims, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Norway, and France, have launched legal proceedings. In Paris, the preliminary investigation is being conducted by the DCRI (Directorate General of Internal Security). A formal judicial inquiry, opened in January 2014, was then entrusted to Judge Laurence Le Vert, a key figure in the Saint-Eloi gallery, which houses anti-terrorism judges at the Palais de Justice (Paris courthouse). The family of Yann Desjeux, along with a French nurse, Murielle Ravey, a survivor of the attack, and three other French employees who were held hostage, have joined the proceedings as civil parties. They suspect, in particular, that the Algerian authorities are withholding information about what really happened in In Amenas, where there were numerous security lapses.
Identifying the perpetrators of the attack is relatively easy, since Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s group claimed responsibility in a video, presenting it as a reprisal against the French military operation “Serval,” launched in Mali a few days earlier and supported by the Algerians. Belmokhtar is one of the most wanted terrorist leaders in the Sahel—in the eyes of the French, one of the main high-value terrorists to eliminate. He has been terrorizing the region for years, carrying out a series of hostage-takings and attacks, often linked to smuggling. Once affiliated with AQIM, he has already escaped several French and American raids. (…)
But a judge cannot rely solely on these fragments of information to advance the investigation. Laurence Le Vert must reconstruct the precise sequence of events, authenticate the true causes of Yann Desjeux’s death, assess any potential Algerian responsibility, identify all members of the commando, and prosecute the surviving attackers and their leaders. Several terrorists have been taken prisoner. Interrogated by the Algerians and the FBI, three of them provided valuable information about the organization of the attack and its participants, which was passed on to the French justice system as well as other relevant countries. This information notably concerns the preparations carried out in Libya and the various leaders who oversaw the operation, including the Algerian Mohamed Lamine Bencheneb, a mathematics graduate killed during the raid, and Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who remains at large.
For his part, General Pierre de Villiers, Chief of the Defence Staff, interviewed [on Europe 1] in October 2014, mentioned eight identified and already effectively hunted individuals: “(…) We have neutralized seven of them. There is only one left and we will get him.” This is obviously Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who is blamed for other attacks – the suicide bombings in Arlit and Agadez in Niger, in May 2013, and the one committed against a French army unit near Gao, in Mali, on July 14, 2014, which killed a legionnaire and wounded six soldiers.
General de Villiers is not speaking lightly. For months, several of the “One-Eyed’s” (Belmokhtar’s) close associates have indeed been eliminated on orders from the Élysée Palace: Abou Moghren Al-Tounsi, at the end of September 2013; Fayçal Boussemane and the Mauritanian Al-Hassan Ould Al-Khalil, alias Jouleibib, Belmokhtar’s son-in-law and spokesman, in November 2013; Omar Ould Hamaha, known as Red Beard, Belmokhtar’s right-hand man, in March 2014; Abou Bakr Al-Nasr, known as the Egyptian, a weapons specialist, very active in Benghazi, Libya, killed in April 2014. Another of the One-Eyed’s lieutenants, Ahmed Al-Tilemsi, would be killed in December 2014; He was suspected of being one of the main perpetrators of the kidnapping of Vincent Delory and Antoine de Léocour in Niamey in January 2011.
General de Villiers’ statements provoked strong reactions at the Paris courthouse. “We learned, somewhat furiously, through the media, that individuals suspected of involvement in terrorism cases had been captured and neutralized by the French army ,” lamented Juliette Le Borgne, former prosecutor at the anti-terrorism unit. ” Our legal objective is to keep these people alive to bring them to justice. But that is not the objective of the French army. We simply want to know the truth, for the families.”
Equally outraged to see the military carrying out their own summary justice, Judge Laurence Le Vert immediately summoned General Pierre de Villiers for questioning. The two logics, military and judicial, clash, and it seems impossible to reconcile them. At the Élysée Palace, François Hollande clearly approves of military operations classified as “Defense Confidential” aimed at eradicating the leaders of terrorist groups, without being hampered by the cumbersome legal processes. Whether in the Sahel or, now, in Syria and Libya, he has become entangled in the machinery of war. Justice has taken a back seat.
READ MORE FRENCH NEWS AT: 21st CENTURY WIRE FRANCE FILES
Source: https://21stcenturywire.com/2025/11/24/candace-owens-and-what-if-she-was-right/
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