Hollande’s driver ‘forced into mental ward’ A former chauffeur suing a close aide of the French president tells Matthew Campbell in Paris he is the victim of a bid to silence him Matthew Campbell Published: 30 June A FORMER chauffeur of François Hollande has complained of being shut in a psychiatric ward in Paris for a week to stop him pursuing allegations against one of the French president’s closest advisers. In a case that threatens to embarrass the Socialist government, Mohamed Belaid, 40, claims to have been threatened by a senior police official after being arrested on June 20 and confined to hospital for a week when there was nothing wrong with him. “I felt like a political prisoner,” he told The Sunday Times last week, describing a “scene from hell” in which he was surrounded by wailing patients. He claimed a police official had asked him if he wanted to “bring down” Hollande or his adviser and warned: “You’ve seen what happens in Marseilles and Corsica? I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, for hooded men to come round and attack you.” Belaid’s account of what happened to him between June 20 and last Thursday, when he was released, is evocative more of a banana republic than “la belle France”, a country that prides itself on its human rights. “It was as if he had been kidnapped to prevent him from speaking,” said Naima, his wife. “We’re afraid all the time that something will happen — that they’ll come in the night.” She gestured towards Farah, the couple’s 11-year-old daughter: “She’s growing up in permanent anxiety.” Belaid’s ordeal began when police banged on his door in the Parisian suburb of Argenteuil at 6am 10 days ago. They removed documents relating to a court case that he had brought against Hollande and Faouzi Lamdaoui, the presidential adviser on equality and diversity. After being questioned at length by police, including the senior official who had threatened him, he was sent for an evaluation by a doctor who abruptly ordered him to be taken to hospital. When his mobile phone was returned to him he discovered that texts he had sent to Hollande without getting any reply had been erased, as had the president’s mobile phone number. Belaid’s dealings with Hollande go back to the end of 2008, when Hollande stepped down as general secretary of the Socialist party to prepare for his presidential campaign. As a result, he lost his official chauffeur. Lamdaoui, for long one of Hollande’s closest lieutenants, was in charge of his logistics at the time and hired Belaid, like him of Algerian origin, as Hollande’s driver. According to Belaid, Lamdaoui promised him £1,300 a month and a work contract that would entitle him to full benefits. “I drove him everywhere,” said Belaid, who now works as a supermarket manager in Argenteuil. “I drove him to parliament, to television studios, to his dry cleaner. I was expected to be on call seven days a week, 24 hours a day.” He says he received only a fraction of what had been offered and the promised employment contract never materialised. He was convinced that Hollande and Lamdaoui were taking advantage of him and quit after six months. He tried to persuade them to pay up by protesting in front of parliament with a banner, then decided to sue. The court threw out the case last year on the grounds that there was no work contract to prove Belaid had served as Hollande’s chauffeur. An industrial tribunal tomorrow is expected to throw out another complaint because the president’s immunity prevents him being called as a witness. To complicate matters, Belaid discovered that several years ago, Lamdaoui had allegedly used the name of Belaid’s wife Naima to register an import-export company without her permission. Belaid instigated another court case in the name of his wife, which has yet to be heard. He claimed that Lamdaoui offered him €40,000 through a lawyer to drop it. He refused. Earlier this year another man of Algerian origin named Adel Merah, also from Argenteuil, lodged a complaint against Belaid claiming that he had threatened him. It was this that led to the police raid on Belaid’s flat and his arrest on June 20. Lamdaoui did not respond to emails or telephone messages last week. According to his lawyer, all of Belaid’s cases had been thrown out by the courts. Nor would Cellupica, Belaid’s lawyer, confirm that money had been offered in exchange for dropping the case. “I cannot comment on confidential dealings with my clients,” he said. But Cellupica said he was convinced that Belaid’s hospitalisation on a psychiatric ward for one week in the Victor Dupouy hospital in Argenteuil had been an attempt to intimidate him into dropping the case against Lamdaoui. Christophe Lamisse, a psychiatrist at the hospital, signed a release order seen by The Sunday Times that stated there was “no clinical element justifying” keeping him in. “It was all a setup,” said Belaid. “They wanted to humiliate him,” added his wife. A presidential aide denied that Hollande knew anything about the hospitalisation. “His case against the president has been thrown out,” he said. “This has nothing to do with Hollande.” Belaid and his wife did not blame Hollande for their latest misfortune. “People hide things from him,” said Naima. “He’s actually quite nice.” They believe that a network of figures of north African origin from Argenteuil conspired to have Belaid threatened and put into hospital. “They’re like a mafia,” said Naima. When Belaid was released from hospital in the early hours of Thursday, he slept until dawn in his car, so afraid was he that he might be targeted in his home, as the police official had suggested. “Anything could happen to me,” he said. “But I won’t let them get away with it. They’ve tried to tarnish my name.”
Posted on: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 06:56:23 +0000
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