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Pan-African activist Kemi Seba was arrested by the General Directorate of Internal Security in Paris more than 24 hours ago while traveling in France for private reasons but with a diplomatic passport. President of the NGO Urgence Panafricaine, he had entered into a political and media standoff with the French State which had claimed to strip him of his French nationality, to which he had hardly opposed, preferring to burn his French passport while the State of Niger appointed him Special Advisor with diplomatic passport. It is this same diplomatic passport that the French services tried to use against him by considering charging him with the very serious charge of treason and espionage (Art. 411 of the Penal Code) which, being liable to Assizes, could have justified in French criminal procedure a stay in police custody for up to 96 hours or even 144 hours at the discretion of the magistrates of the Seat. In the end, this was not the case since France has just given up on pursuing Kemi Seba and released him only a few hours ago. His arrest reeks of political motives comparable to those in the Paul Du Rove affair (Pavel Durov, who, we recall, had legally changed his name by acquiring French nationality), it is reasonable to think that the French State will inflict the same pressure on the activist. If in terms of procedure Paris could indeed have played it safe, on a purely strategic level it is difficult to see how the French State could come out the winner of such an affair in the long term. “Worse than a crime is a mistake”, the terrible quote from Deputy Antoine Claude Joseph Boulay (attributed to Talleyrand) regarding the execution of the Duke of Enghien seems to resonate in the same way in this case. We take stock with the international criminal lawyer Maître Massimo Bianchi #KemiSeba #Durov #Africa #Geopolitics #BRICS #Niger #IdrissAberkane #MassimoBianchi