Dominique Prieur

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Dominique Angela Françoise Prieur (born June 21, 1949 in Besançon ) is an officer of the French secret service ( DGSE ). On July 10, 1985, she was involved in the attack against the Rainbow Warriors of the Greenpeace organization in Auckland , in which the Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira was killed.

Prieur had familiarized himself with the scene of the European peace and environmental activists and worked in the secret service as a intelligence agent. She worked with the agent Christine Cabon, who was also involved in the DGSE campaign but was able to leave New Zealand before the imminent arrest. Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart traveled to New Zealand disguised as a married couple under the names Sophie and Alain Turenge . The alleged couple's Swiss passports turned out to be forged.

After her arrest by New Zealand police, she and her partner Mafart pleaded guilty of manslaughter . On November 22, 1985, she was sentenced to ten years in prison. Under an agreement dated July 6, 1986, negotiated between France and New Zealand by the United Nations Secretary-General , the convicts were allowed to serve the prison term on the island of Hao in French Polynesia . Prieur was able to return to France on May 6, 1988 because she was pregnant (her husband was allowed to meet her in Hao). Like Mafart, she did not return to Hao afterwards. These early de facto releases were in violation of the agreement, but France was unwilling to specifically address the protests from New Zealand and the UN Arbitral Tribunal.

Dominique Prieur later achieved the rank of colonel .

In 1996 Prieur published a book entitled Agent secrète ( Secret Agent ), which describes her role in the covert action from her point of view.

At the end of 2008 it became known through the press that Dominique Prieur had been working under her maiden name since 2007 as the head of the personnel department of the Paris Fire Brigade , a pioneer unit of the French army .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ COURT OF APPEAL OF NEW ZEALAND of August 4, 2005, file number CA92 / 05 ( online )
  2. ↑ Le Monde, sélection hebdom., 22-28 août 1985, p. 6
  3. ↑ French expat recalls NZ bombing on BBC News of 8 July 2005
  4. ^ Case concerning the difference between New Zealand and France. (PDF; 1.4 MB) Archived from the original on April 3, 2012 ; accessed on May 19, 2018 (English).
  5. ↑ Une saboteuse du Rainbow Warrior chez les pompiers on Le Figaro from December 31, 2008.
personal data
SURNAME Prieur, Dominique
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Prieur, Dominique Angela Françoise
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French officer
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Besançon