Europe – Page 13 – praag.org

‘Marine Le Pen could win presidential elections in 2017’

Ludovic de Danne, European Affairs Adviser for the leader of the French right-wing party Front National Marine Le Pen, said that Marine Le Pen could become number one in the presidential elections, if the National Front party gains 7 million voters.

French departmental elections showed that the National Front party could gain a record number of votes in the presidential elections, possibly making Marine Le Pen the next French president, European Affairs Adviser for the leader of the French right-wing party Front National Marine Le Pen, told Sputnik Monday.

“More than 5 million voters for National Front – it has never happened before, it’s unprecedented! If we could keep this kind of figures, Marine Le Pen will have the chance to reach 7 to 8 million voters for president’s elections… In this situation Marine Le Pen could become number one,” Ludovic de Danne told Sputnik.

De Danne explained that Marine Le Pen’s chances are very high as the UMP alliance consists of several different parties and each of them will have to present their own candidate for the presidential elections whereas National Front has a single candidate.

“Sarkozy pretends to be a winner in these elections, but when it comes to the president’s elections it’s not going to work like this. The UMP alliance will have to separate and each party will have to have the candidate of its own. And they don’t have the chances against Marine Le Pen,” de Danne said.

Reuters published false report on MH17 says eyewitness

An eyewitness, whom Reuters cites as saying he saw evidence of a surface-to-air missile launched from rebel-held territory on the day MH17 was downed, told RT the news agency gave a false report of his interview.

As a part of a March report on the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 tragedy Reuters talked to Pyotr Fedotov, a 58-year-old resident of the village Chervonniy Zhovten in the Lugansk Region of eastern Ukraine.

“When interviewed by Reuters, Fedotov, the witness who described the ‘wiggling’ rocket, at first said on camera that it was fired from territory held by the Ukrainian army. Later, off camera, he said it was launched from a nearby rebel area. Asked why he had originally said the opposite, he said it was because he was afraid of the rebels,” the news agency said.

RT contacted Fedotov who, after some persuasion, agreed to be filmed. He told RT that Reuters correspondent Anton Zverev was “less than accurate” with Fedotov’s testimony.

“When we talked about the Boeing on camera, I explained everything as it was. The things that I allegedly said off-camera were just made up by the journalist. It’s all lies. Off-camera, we never discussed the Boeing,” Fedotov told RT.

He added that the Reuters journalist contacted him after taking the interview, but never showed him a draft of the article. Instead he was asking whether Fedotov had got into trouble for speaking to him.

“The journalist called me and asked if I was in trouble. I was really surprised. Why would I be in trouble if I told the truth? And then my friends told me in the article I was saying different things when the cameras were on and off. That’s when I understood why he was asking if I was in trouble,” the witness explained.

“So it’s mere fantasy from the journalist or maybe he was doing it for his own benefit,” he added.

RT’s request to Reuters for comments on the controversy and raw footage of Fedotov’s interview was not replied to as of publication of this article.

Earlier in March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov condemned the Reuters report of witnesses’ statements, saying it “looked like a stovepiping.” The top diplomat also then said that questions posed by Russia’s officials remained unanswered, saying there have been no promised images from American satellites or recordings of Ukrainian air traffic controllers’ communications with the plane.

The Malaysian Boeing 777 airliner was downed over eastern Ukraine on July 17 last year, killing 298 people on board.

Earlier Ukrainian media falsely claimed that Dutch investigators concluded that MH17 had been shot down by the rebels with a Buk missile, citing a report in the Dutch media that outlined the popular theory, but didn’t claim it to be proven. Dutch prosecutors told RT at the time that the investigation had not been concluded.

Germanwings investigation is hardly conclusive

Christine Negroni is an aviation journalist and safety specialist who is writing a book on aviation mysteries to be published by Penguin in 2016.

Negroni says the evidence so far shows first officer Andreas Lubitz deliberately flew the plane to a lower altitude.

We know also that the plane wound up crashing into a mountain. The question French prosecutor Brice Robin has not answered is how he knows the co-pilot had that end in mind.

We know the plane was commanded down to a lower altitude after reaching 38,000 feet. We do not yet know why.

We know the Captain, identified in web postings as Patrick Sonderheimer, left the cockpit and was unable to get back in. We do not know that he tried to enter using the door passcode or that the door was blocked beyond the normal locking function. All we know is that the cockpit voice recorder shows he tried to enter by knocking.

There may be reasons for trying to enter by knocking, including confusion or distraction due to alarm.

We know that the first officer Lubitz failed to heed the knocks on the door. We do not know if this was deliberate. We know Lubitz was breathing. Both his inappropriate action in not heeding the knocking on the door and his breathing is consistent with deliberate action OR incapacitation.

We know the plane descended. We do not know if this was via programming the plane to descend or flight by hand by the first officer. A conscious and lucid pilot does not fly a plane into a mountain unless it is deliberate. An addled or unconscious pilot does not see or recognize the threat of a mountain and does. Either one of those options is possible, but the evidence presented so far does not allow conclusions.

Finally, unlike in the United States and other countries, the French judicial authorities are in charge of cockpit voice recorders and flight data recorders, which then makes them available to the air safety agency the Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses. There’s a reason for this increased oversight: In the crash of an Airbus A-320 in 1988, BEA was suspected of tampering with FDR data.

As a consequence, air accidents in France are seen through the prism of criminality. In other countries seasoned air safety investigators understand there is a multitude of factors that contribute to a disaster and will wait to have all the evidence before drawing conclusions.

This is the only way I can understand how the Marseilles French prosecutor made the tremendous leap of logic in concluding that the first officer “wanted” to crash the plane killing all 150 onboard.

The evidence so far shows Lubitz deliberately flew the plane to a lower altitude and a crash resulted. The question not answered in anything I’ve heard or seen is whether he intended for that to happen. This is not a subtle quibble. It makes a monumental difference in what really happened to Germanwings Flight 9295.

Air disaster movie opens with similar plot to Germanwings

An Oscar-nominated film will still be released in the UK despite its disturbing similarities to the Alps air disaster.

Argentinian film Wild Tales features a mass killer who locks himself in the cockpit of a passenger jet and crashes it in to the ground to murder everyone on board.

In terrifying scenes the fictional passengers panic and one tries to smash his way through a door to get to the controls in chillingly similar circumstances to the ill-fated Germanwings Airbus A320 flight.

The fictional killer invites his enemies on to the flight, including a lover who jilted him and a colleague who was hard on him at work, so he can kill them.

Despite protests the highly-acclaimed movie will be shown in British cinemas from today, however, it was released in Spain and Germany last year.

On Tuesday he locked the captain out of the Airbus A320’s cockpit before setting the airliner’s controls to descend into a rocky valley, obliterating the plane and killing all 150 on board.

Reports in Germany suggest the locked-out pilot may have resorted to using an axe in a desperate bid to get through the armoured door as the plane hurtled towards the ground.

Meanwhile Düsseldorf University Hospital said in a statement Friday that Lubitz had been undergoing diagnosis there since last month, DPA news agency reported. “Reports telling that Andreas L. [Lubitz] received treatment against depression at our clinic are inaccurate,” a hospital spokeswoman said, adding: “It was diagnostic tests.”

Lubitz’s colleagues have described his behaviour as ”normal,” and said he didn’t seem to be suicidal.

“I got to know him…as a very nice, fun and polite young man,” Klaus Radke, head of the local flight club in the town of Montabaur in western Germany, said. He added that Lubitz came across as “a completely normal guy.”

Co-pilot had no death wish say friends

The co-pilot named in the Germanwings plane crash was Andreas Guenter Lubitz.

The 28-year-old was from Montabaur, a town in the district seat of the Westerwaldkreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, according to a local flight club.

Acquaintances said he was in his late 20s and showed no signs of depression when they saw him last autumn.

“He was happy he had the job with Germanwings and he was doing well,” said a member of a glider club, Peter Ruecker, who watched him learn to fly.

“He gave off a good feeling.”

Lubitz had obtained his glider pilot’s license as a teenager and was accepted as a Lufthansa pilot trainee after finishing a tough German college preparatory school, Ruecker said.

His Facebook page lists his interests, including German electronica band Schiller, French superstar DJ David Guetta, his local Burger King, 10-pin bowling, aviation humour and a technical website about the A320 model of aircraft he flew into a mountainside.

Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said the co-pilot “never said a word” in the 10 minutes before the crash, which killed 150 people.

He said he never answered a question or opened the door before the plane hit the ground and the plane’s descent was “voluntary”.

The Federal Aviation Administration praised Lubitz’s skills and included him in the prestigious FAA Airmen Certification Database.

The database contains the names certified pilots who have “met or exceeded the high educational, licensing and medical standards established by the FAA”.

Aviation Business Gazette announced the award in September 2013, writing: “Pilot certification standards have evolved over time in an attempt to reduce pilot errors that lead to fatal crashes.

He had undertaken 630 hours of flight time in an A320, according to Germany’s Bild.

Mr Brice said earlier that co-pilot Lubitz directed the plane into the ground but the passengers only realised what was happening “in the last moments”.

“He took this action, for reasons we still don’t know why,” he said.

“We can only deduce he destroyed the plane. He voluntarily allowed the plane to lose altitude.

“I think the victims only realised at the last moment because on the recording you only hear the screams on the last moments.”

Source: The Mirror

French president declares contents of second black box missing

French President François Hollande said the contents of a second black box found on Wednesday were missing as investigators managed to extract audio recordings from the first flight recorder recovered from Germanwings flight 4U9525.

French investigators say they have succeeded in extracting “usable data”, including sound and voices, from the first black box recovered from the Airbus A320 that crashed in the French Alps.

After revelations emerged that one of the pilots was locked out of the cockpit as Germanwings flight 4U9525 crashed and killed 150 on board, speculation has swirled as to what exactly happened in the moments before the disaster.

A senior military official involved in the investigation has told the New York Times that the audio from the “black box” flight recorder reveals that one of the pilots left his seat and then exited the cockpit.

He can then be heard knocking lightly on the door in an attempt to get back in. Soon after, he can reportedly be heard trying to break the door down.

No conversation is heard. Minutes later the plane hit a mountain in the French Alps, killing all 150 on board.

It remains unknown which pilot was in the cockpit and which was locked out.

The information remains unconfirmed by authorities.

The co-pilot had been on the job since September 2013 and had 630 hours of flying experience. He “was First Officer at Germanwings since September 2013,” a Lufthansa spokeswoman told AFP.

By comparison the plane’s pilot had more than ten years experience and 6,000 hours of experience flying the Airbus A320 model.

Neither of the pilots have been named.

French aviation safety expert Christophe Naudin told The Local that it remains unclear whether someone else may have gained entry to the cockpit.

“We don’t know whether the pilot left and was locked out or someone else entered the cockpit and locked him out,” he said.

“What’s troubling is that apparently we don’t hear voices anymore once the door is locked.”

Once the cockpit door is locked it is impossible to gain access, even with the code, explained Naudin.

Reinforced cockpit doors were installed on all planes at the behest of the US in the aftermath of 9/11.

“This case could show that having reinforced doors does not necessarily increase security and safety on airplanes,” Naudin said.

The is the biggest mystery is what happened with pilot inside. No distress signal was sent from the plane and the crew failed to respond to ground control’s desperate attempts to make contact.

Authorities have said the plane was still flying at the moment of the crash, meaning it did not explode mid-air.

Aviation experts have suggested several theories.

“If the pilots did not stop the airplane from flying into the mountains, it is because they were unconscious or dead, or they had decided to die, or they were forced to die,” one expert told the AFP news agency.

Authorities hope to find the second black box to reveal more.

Unlikely. The head of France’s Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses (BEA) crash investigation agency, Remi Jouty, told reporters he still had “not the slightest explanation” for the tragedy at this stage.

“It is inexplicable. The plane was in perfect condition and the two pilots were experienced,” Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr said in Frankfurt.

Weather did not appear to be a factor in the crash, with conditions calm at the time, and Germanwings had an unblemished safety record.

Biggest political upset in the Netherlands after asylum announcement

The political upset this week does not come from France, where Marine Le Pen came out stronger in local elections, but from the Netherlands.

The largest party, the liberal VVD has announced that it wants to abolish asylum completely for non-Europeans, meaning black Africans.

The VVD wants to convince other European parties in Europe to adopt a new ‘Fortress Europe’ policy.

This is the first time that a European mainstream party is adopting an openly anti-immigration stance. The proposal is that African countries should rather receive asylum seekers.

Ostensibly the party is worried about “drownings” when tens of thousands of Africans perish at sea in the hazardous journey to Europe.

Last year some 3000 drowned and the VVD says it wants to put an end to this. The real reason is that vast majority of people making it to Europe won’t get asylum, but as illegals they soon join the crime circuit.

During the recent Staten elections, the main voice for immigration and a multicultural hodge-podge, the PvdA, lost the election decisively.

The idea to “shelter refugees in their own region” actually calls the bluff of the European asylum-industry.

Not a single economic refugee will travel to Morocco, Ethiopia, Tanzania and other “designated safe countries”, for the simple reason that hand-outs don’t exist in these countries.

The VVD for the first time is siding with parties like the Front National and the PVV.

EU rightwing groups gather in Moscow

Representatives of about a dozen “far-right” groups from across Europe gathered in Russia Sunday for a pro-Kremlin conference as concern grows over Moscow’s alleged attempts to court “extremists” on the continent.

About 150 members of Russian nationalist and right-wing European parties — including Greece’s Golden Dawn and Germany’s National Democratic Party — met in Russia’s second city Saint Petersburg to berate the West for its stance on the Ukraine conflict and to promote “traditional values”.

Rightwing groups across Europe have become vocal supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin over his handling of the Ukraine crisis, prompting allegations they have reached a Faustian pact to help burnish the Kremlin’s battered image.

The growing ties come despite Moscow’s claims it is aiming to counter what it sees as “fascism” in Ukraine, where pro-Western protesters swept a Kremlin-backed president from power last year.

“We do not support the sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine conflict,” Udo Voigt, a member of the European Parliament from Germany’s National Democratic Party, told the conference.

“It is incredible what patience Russia and President Putin have shown in the face of NATO’s aggressive policies.”

But the Russian federation of Jewish communities said it was extremely worried about such a meeting in “one of the cities that suffered most from the Nazis”, saying it was “particularly cynical” given Russia would celebrate the 70th anniversary of its victory over Adolf Hitler’s Germany in May.

Organisers said the forum was intended to strengthen links with right-wing groups across Europe and help shape a common agenda.

“This meeting is the first foundation stone towards constructing the new world that we are obliged to build,” said Fyodor Birukov, from the pro-Kremlin Rodina party that organised the event.

“I see this forum as a way pushing the fight back against liberalism and what we call modernism, the destruction of traditional values including Christianity throughout the modern world,” said Nick Griffin, former head of the British National Party.

France’s National Front did not attend the meeting but its leader Marine Le Pen appeared on Russian state television on Saturday to condemn EU sanctions against Moscow and anti-Russian “propaganda”, which she claimed is being done “under orders from the US”.

Source: AFP

‘US spies feel at home in Switzerland’

US spies operate in Switzerland without much fear of being unmasked, because Swiss intelligence, though knowledgeable and very professional, poses no threat to them, former NSA contributor Edward Snowden told Swiss TV.

“The reason that made Switzerland so interesting as the capital of espionage – particularly Geneva – has not changed,” Snowden said in an interview to Darius Rochebin on RTS, a Swiss broadcaster. The two spoke at the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights on March 5. The transcript of the interview waspublished in le Temps, a Swiss French-language newspaper, this Saturday.

“There have always been international headquarters, the United Nations, WTO, WHO, ICRC [in Geneva]. There are representations of foreign governments, embassies, international organizations, NGOs … A number of organizations, and all of them are in one city [Geneva]!”

According to Snowden, other Swiss cities have also been “affected” by US spies.

“You have exceptional flows of capital and money in Zurich. You have bilateral agreements and international trade in Bern,” he said.

The ex-NSA man recalled the time he was working in Geneva as an undercover US agent. He said the Americans weren’t afraid of Swiss intelligence.

“Swiss services were not considered as a threat. [They] are also very knowledgeable and very professional. But they are small in numbers.”

Snowden compared Swiss intelligence to spying agencies in France, saying they respected French spies who are known to be “sophisticated and aggressive.”

He drew examples of CIA operations concerning weapons of mass destruction, adding that people “involved in nuclear proliferation” were violating the law in Switzerland, Germany and neighboring countries.

And unfortunately, “political influence” was seen in these cases, which “rose to the highest level in the government.”

“That’s why representatives of the US government, even when they violate the Swiss laws, have a certain level of comfort, knowing that there will be no consequences,” Snowden concluded.

Front National at the gates of power

Manuel Valls, the French prime minister, reminded his bedraggled Socialist Party in September last year of the obvious: “The Front National is at the gates of power” as the Left tries to avert the electoral catastrophe with the usual mantras: “racism, antisemitism and homophobia“.

But the public is no longer impressed and could not care less, just like the when East-Germans no longer believed in the slogans of their lefties and started to chant: ‘we are the people’.

A low turn out today in France’s local council elections will probably play into the hands of the nationalists. The socialists are demoralized, like everywhere in Europe. Their globalist world view is collapsing. Polls predict that the National Front will be in the lead.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National, already has 18 council seats, and in the European Parliament in Brussels, the party has 23 MEPs.

EU funds just reinforce the dictatorship of Brussels and impoverish the downtrodden rural and small-town folk of the region, the terror of the French establishment says. “I have to remind people ad nauseam that this is not European money. It’s part of French taxpayers’ money that transits through Brussels with the rest going to pay for central and eastern Europe,” Le Pen sighs.

Le Pen is tilling the fertile electoral soil of taxes and immigration for a run at the Élysée Palace in two years’ time.

The pro-American elite is terrified of a President Le Pen since 2002 when Jean-Marie, Marine’s father and the founder of the Front, as it is known, featured in the run-off for the presidency. He was defeated by Jacques Chirac when voters rallied to block the pariah.

With his blonde daughter now in charge of the family firm, prospects for the right look brighter.

As the New Statesman eloquently puts it:

The country is in a foul mood. The sense of dispossession at the hands of a hostile world is feeding contempt for la France d’en haut – the governing caste. President François Hollande and his Parti Socialiste (PS) have been disowned by many of their disappointed voters, discredited by scandal and economic failure.

Marine Le Pen, 46, the youngest of the 86-year-old patriarch’s three daughters, is gliding above this desolate landscape, a protective Joan of Arc.

Le Pen is amused by the left’s indignation over the way that she has broadened her attraction, softening the anti-immigration rhetoric and adding Socialist voters to the party’s hard-right faithful, says Charles Bremner who interviewed her many times.

Charles de Gaulle, whom Le Pen admires, was accused of being both a fascist and a Bolshevik she says. “France is neither on the right nor the left – it’s just France . . . I don’t have the feeling that I tell patriots on the left different things from what I say to patriots of the right.”

When she was eight, a bomb destroyed the family flat. No one was ever arrested for the crime. Her father, an ex-parabat, soldiered on.

Also part of the family is Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, 24, one of the Front’s three MPs, and the daughter of Yann, Marine’s second sister. She is said to be closer to the patriarch than Marine because she opposes gay marriage, while Marine tolerates it.

Le Pen is gaining in the polls

Discontent in France has translated into a drift of power towards the far right in the form of Front National. It no longer requires a very vivid imagination to envision Ms. Le Pen achieving an electoral victory in 2017.

Despite her party’s controversial past it has become much more socially acceptable to support the FN, to the extent that Marine Le Pen draws enthusiastic crowds to official events, and Madonna, who once superimposed a swastika on an image of Ms. Le Pen’s face at a concert, wants to “sit down and have a drink” with her.

None of this changes the fact that her political agenda remains subversive. She calls for an end to the EU and has adopted policies critical of the French allies, backing Putin’s annexation of Crimea. She also wants to raise wages and pensions, restore the retirement age to 60, as well as establish border controls and reinstate the death penalty.

Meanwhile, many voters hope that she will be the one to “save France,” in the belief that only radical policy changes can do so. Yet, it is highly questionable whether Ms. Le Pen’s vision, with its populist promises and scepticism towards free markets, free movement and free trade, is a road to salvation.

The spirit that brought 4 million French closer together and onto the streets in solidarity after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo has already waned, and the polling numbers show how FN’s protectionism, conservatism and nationalism appeals to voters en masse.

FN is part of a broader trend in Europe, where the lingering economic malaise and associated unemployment of the Eurozone has led significant numbers to respond to the easy attraction of the far right or far left.

It can best be described as the politics of scapegoating, whether the blame falls on immigrants, Muslims, Euro-bureaucrats or Jews like in FN’s past, and the tactics are mirrored all across Europe. Voters are disillusioned with the political elite, and as the traditional, centrist parties lose political capital, voters turn to the fringe, where promises of sweeping, popular action sound like a welcome overhaul of politics-as-usual.

Europe’s voters are increasingly drawn to protest parties

Syriza in Greece has been the first protest party to obtain real powers of government, and its doings are monitored closely, by centre and fringe parties alike. France, however, is a much bigger fish than Greece, and if Ms. Le Pen should happen to win the presidency, it would raise a number of awkward questions about French membership in the European Union.

Currently, FN is poised to round up 30% of the vote in the first of two rounds of regional elections on March 22nd and 29th. Although it is doubtful that FN will win many local assemblies, as voters from centre-right and left may gang up to exclude it, there will still be hundreds of seats across France filled by members of FN, forming a base for the presidential campaign in two years.

The polls indicate that Ms. Le Pen will probably make it to the second round in 2017, but that her chances of winning are slim, but existent. In the end, winning the presidency is perhaps the lesser goal. Governing does not always lend itself well to extreme policies and populist views. Furthermore, FN has already succeeded in changing France from a two- to a three-party system, which is no small feat.

Until 2017, the incumbent government will be under a lot of pressure. There are plenty of problems to address, and with FN racing ahead in the polls, consciousness of public opinion is likely to affect domestic and multilateral matters.

This could slow down the reform process that has been underway, such as Macron Law, which was passed by decree following a tense vote of confidence in Parliament, and make implementation less rigorous.

Public attitudes towards EU, Germany and Greece could also be affected by disturbing trends at home, which may have been a factor in the negotiations between Eurozone finance ministers in February. Here, France took a soft stance towards Greece and advocated that the other Eurozone members show understanding and respect for the change in leadership and the Greek electorate’s decision.

There is a small risk that French voters are going to set a similar shift in motion in the not-so-distant future, and if the economic consequences of a potential Grexit would be problematic and inconvenient, the results of a “Frexit,” although rooted in different causes, would be very messy indeed.

Source: internationalpolicydigest.org

The convicted French comedian and the lying ex-minister

French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala was found guilty on Wednesday of “condoning terrorism” after posting a sardonic Facebook message in January.

After the attacks that killed 12 people at the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, one municipal police officer south of Paris, and four people at a kosher supermarket, Dieudonné wrote on his Facebook page that he felt like “Charlie Coulibaly.”

The message blended the popular “Je suis Charlie” slogan to pay tribute to all the victims in condemning the attacks.

David de Stefano, one of Dieudonné’s lawyers, said that he would appeal Wednesday’s conviction.

“When you put that phrase back in the context of all the other messages he published on Facebook, you realize that he had a peaceful approach,” Mr. de Stefano said.

The court in Paris gave him a suspended two-month jail sentence because his message “showed sympathy with one of the gunmen”, Coulibaly. Coulibaly was shot before he could stand trial.

The comedian was convicted under a new law enacted in November meant to rein in speech supporting terrorism. The law was aggressively enforced by the French authorities in the wake of the January attacks.

Meanwhile a storm has erupted over a former French deputy minister in Nicolas Sarkozy’s government who claimed that she had been the lover of one of the victims killed in the attack.

Janette Bougrab gave a series of smiling interviews on the murder of her “partner” Charb – the editor of Charlie Hebdo, Stephane Charbonnier. She insisted however that she felt “emotional”.

But in a bizarre twist, Charbonnier’s family as well as his gay lover have formally denied the relationship between him and former minister, Bougrab.

Bougrab, the mother of an adopted three-year-old daughter May, claimed the two had lived together for three years, but Charb’s gay partner “outed” him at his funeral and suggested that Bougrab had lied. She did not attend the funeral.

The extreme left feminist Caroline Fourest quickly came to Bougrab’s rescue during an interview shortly after the “outing” and declared that the two had been romantically involved.

Fourest also admitted that Charlie Hebdo had needed money urgently because readers had lost almost all interest before the fatal shooting. Some have suggested that Bougrab had secured funds for the weekly, but needed a way to donate the funds without scrutiny.

It appears that Bougrab might have paid Charb for anti-Muslim caricatures and had invented the relationship in order to mask the transfer of funds. The transfer would rouse no suspiscion “between spouses”.

Some even suggest that this arrangement had been discovered by the police commissioner Helric Fredou after he had looked into Bougrab’s bank accounts. Fredou committed suicide while working on the Charlie Hebdo case.

It appears that Bougrab’s parents also told the police commissioner that the two had not shared a bed. Charb was a communist, Bougrab a member of the UMP, the centre right party.

Asked if she had been comforted by the world’s adoption of the ‘Je Suis Charlie’ symbol and that it could be seen as a sign of victory, of hope, Bougrab said passionately: ‘Absolutely not, because he’s dead. It’s absolutely not a victory.

‘It’s a defeat. It’s a tragedy for our country and I refused to rejoice in the idea that people are demonstrating in the streets because they have torn away the precious being who accompanied me in life.’

Bougrab slammed the ‘inadequate’ security around the Charlie Hebdo offices, saying: ‘We could have avoided this massacre.’

American diplomats receive Russian ‘gifts’

American diplomats, US Embassy consul for political affairs, Andrea Brouillet-Rodriguez and second secretary of the US Embassy, Christopher Grossman were presented with Russian “gifts”.

One of the presented photos, “Gorlovka Madonna,” is considered one of the symbols of war in Donbass. A young mother with a ten-month baby in her arms from Gorlovka was killed by the Ukrainian punishers.

The guests were also presented with the photo of brutally murdered Vadim Papura who died on May 2, 2014 in Odessa.

Andrea Brouillet-Rodriguez hastened to turn away when receiving the photos, her eyes barely had caught the sight of the images.

“The purpose of our present is ‘let’s be friends’. Let us recall the experience of our grandfathers, who together forged victory. A certain contribution to our victory over the Nazis was made by the Americans. It is better to combine our efforts today to win over the worst evil on the planet,” the Russian communist deputy, Bair Tsyrenov said.

He also reminded the American visitors about the approaching 70th anniversary of the Soviet Victory in the Great Patriotic war.

The communists expressed hope that the two countries entered into another confrontation can find common ground in the struggle for world peace, just as they did 70 years ago.

Russia stages massive military exercises in response to NATO provocation

Russian military exercises this week range from the Arctic to the Pacific Ocean and involve tens of thousands of troops, the Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.

The Kremlin has voiced concern about U.S. plans to beef up its military presence near Russia’s borders. Later this month, U.S. troops are holding joint exercises with forces from EU nations Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Four Polish NATO MiG-29s flew training missions in Lithuania on Monday, under the command and control of an alliance AWACS surveillance aircraft in a small corridor between Belarus and the Kaliningrad region.

Monday’s AWACS mission was flying from Oerland airbase, near Trondheim in Norway. The AWACS flights were part of efforts to bolster NATO members, particularly the Baltic states.

AP reported that Russia plans to station state-of-the art missiles in its westernmost Baltic exclave and deploy nuclear-capable bombers to Crimea in response.

The Iskander missiles will be sent to the Kaliningrad region that borders NATO members Poland and Lithuania as part of the maneuvers, said a Defense Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to comment publicly.

The official also said Russia will deploy long-range, nuclear-capable Tu-22M3 bombers to Crimea, on the Black Sea peninsula.

In a statement, the Defense Ministry said the Baltic Fleet, the Southern Military District and the Airborne Forces have been brought to the highest stage of combat readiness and have started moving to shooting ranges as part of the drills.

The wide-ranging exercise started Monday, when President Vladimir Putin ordered the Northern Fleet and other military forces on combat alert as part of the exercise in the Arctic. Other units in the Pacific region, southern Siberia and southwestern Russia also launched drills.

The Iskander missiles deployment to Kaliningrad reflects Moscow’s readiness in response to NATO moves to deploy forces closer to Russia’s borders.

The missiles, which are capable of hitting enemy targets up to 500 kilometers (310 miles away) with high precision, can be equipped with a nuclear or a conventional warhead. From Kaliningrad, they could reach several NATO member states.

Meanwhile heavy machine-gun and light artillery fire pounded a district of Donetsk, the biggest city of eastern Ukraine, on Monday and pro-Russian self-defence forces said there has been no lull in the fighting since a February cease-fire.

The Spartak district, adjacent to the city’s now-flattened airport, is one of several sites in eastern Ukraine to have seen continued hostilities between the self-defence forces and the Ukrainian junta since last month’s cease-fire, brokered by France and Germany in the Belarussian capital Minsk.

The cease-fire is broadly holding in the rest of the region, Reuters reported.