From the Times (de Londres), March 30:
Two guards who had always dreamt of going under cover were allegedly tricked into a plot to kill a ‘Mossad agent’, who was in fact simply a business coach
The two military-grade guards at the intelligence agency base south of Paris were bored. They had dreamt of undercover missions when they had joined the Directorate General for External Security (DGSE) — the French equivalent of MI6. Instead, they had found themselves in the role of glorified gatekeepers.
In 2020, Pierre Bourdin, 28, and Carl Esnault, 25, thought their chance had come, according to investigators. They were asked to join a secret mission to “neutralise” a woman designated by their contact as a Mossad agent in France.
But the woman turned out to have nothing to do with Mossad — the Israeli intelligence agency — and the mission was bogus. The two ended up in the dock in Paris criminal court on Monday alongside 20 other defendants, including retired spies, accused of carrying out one murder, planning two others and undertaking a series of assaults.
Defence lawyers said their clients had been tricked into believing that their victims were “enemies” of the French state. They were nothing of the kind, simply ordinary people targeted by hitmen commissioned by members of a Freemasons lodge, the court was told.
Members of the Great Lodge of the French Masonic Alliance, which proclaims its commitment to society and determination to “contribute to the common good”, are alleged to have charged acquaintances tens of thousands of euros to settle commercial and political disputes through violence, including murder.
They used intelligence and security agency contacts to convince operatives such as Bourdin and Esnault that the missions were being undertaken in the public interest when in fact they were being carried out for financial gain, prosecutors say.
Bourdin told investigators that he had always wanted to leave his gatekeeping role to join the DGSE’s undercover Action branch, which features in The Bureau, the French spy series.
When he and Esnault were contacted in 2020 by Sébastien Leroy, a private security agent, asking them to participate in an operation to “neutralise” a Mossad spy, they agreed, the court was told. Leroy put them in touch with Yannick Pham, a former agent with the Directorate General for Internal Security (DGSI), the equivalent of MI5. Pham, 46, “offered us the chance to do more clandestine work”, Bourdin told investigators. Pham denies aiding and abetting attempted murder.
Bourdin and Esnault were told that their target was Marie-Hélène Dini, 60. They were arrested before they could kill her because a passer-by thought they looked suspicious sitting in a Renault Clio outside her flat wearing black hoods and gloves and alerted the police....
....MUCH MORE
What the actual hell?
