The Paris Court of Appeal will give its final verdict on 21 November into the sale of cyber-surveillance equipment by the French company, Amesys to the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, according to the AFP.
The investigating chamber of the court examined four requests for the cancellation of the indictments, and an appeal on a refusal to place under the status of an assisted witness.
The IT company is suspected of providing the Gaddafi regime with software named Eagle, between 2007 and 2011, which allowed it to track down, imprison, and torture Libyan opponents.
“It is unlikely that a French company could be accused of having participated in acts of torture perpetrated by Muammar Gaddafi,” commented Olivier Baratelli, Amesys’ lawyer.
“This company provided, under the control and with the approval of the General Directorate for External Security, and the French State, software which it has on the contrary always thought was only used exclusively to hunt down terrorists. That was Eagle’s only goal,” he added.
The inquiry was opened in 2013 after a complaint by two French-based NGO’s, the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), and the League of Human Rights (LDH).
The deal was first reported by The Wall Street Journal in 2011, as the Arab Spring protests against autocratic governments raged in several Middle-Eastern countries, including Libya.
Amesys has acknowledged the tech deal with Libya. This was part of the rapprochement between Gaddafi’s regime and the West starting in 2007, when Gaddafi visited then-French President, Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris.
Following an initial filing, FIDH filed a complaint against Amesys for complicity in torture, and a judge agreed to open an investigation. Eleven employees of the company were arrested as part of the investigation, but released without charge in 2016.