Telegram founder arrested in Paris amid content concerns: Tech titans beware? • FRANCE 24 English

could this Mark a turning point for Tech Titans who reap huge profits for the anything goes content served up on their platforms Free Speech absolutists including Elon Musk up in arms over the weekend arrest in Paris of the 39-year-old founder of telegram how strong a case against the Russian born pavl durov and his encrypted social medium telegram that's popular among dissidents and protin Miller bloggers alike durov's detention comes as online hate speech and disinformation continues to spiral as evidenced with the false narratives spun on social media during the UK's recent far-right riots are the durov's musks and Zuckerberg of this world innocent facilitators enabling free expression or Publishers profiting from hate and crime today in the France 24 debate we're asking should Tech Titans beware joining us cyber security and digital diplomacy consultant Raina stambolis thanks for being with us thank you for having me from Avenue in southern France attorney ien Dr uh glad to see you're extending your summer there but thanks for joining us thank you very much from Harley pool in Northeast England tech journalist Connor jwi welcome to the show hey I very much for having me France 24 is Peter O'Bryant is the host of our Tech 24 show how are you very well thanks for thanks F Well you've just been going over the rap sheet uh well I don't we don't even know if it's the rap sheet yet but a statement's been put out in the last hour and what is it numbers is what 12 something like yeah we got a list of charges from the Paris prosecutors just in the last couple hours and they are extensive um pavl doov looks like he's in big trouble um as we know he was arrested on Saturday evening at lour airport and only now have we heard from prosecutors what the charges are um aside from reports in the French media with police sources and and such so this is the first official communication we've had um I can run run through a few of the most serious ones uh complicity in web mastering of an online platform in order to enable an illegal transaction in an organized group that's basically complicity in organized crime most of them are to do with that complicity in possessing pornographic images of minors that's um these again are the charges he potentially faces he is not been formally charged yeah that's right so the these are against a person unnamed but as far as we know this is the only the only arrest that's been made has been him this is the way it some sometimes sometimes works so there seems to be a few charges about child sexual abuse material on telegram which is hosted on the platform without proper oversight according to prop um prosecutors then there's the organized crime section of it things like the selling of uh narcotics um or the selling of um tools used to to hack into uh into internet systems um and then there's a there's a tranch of uh of charges around the provision of um cryptographic so encryption tools without properly declaring them to French authorities so that sounds like a bit of a nerdy one but that's interesting cuz I've not seen that before but certainly there are a lot of very serious um alleged crimes and as we know the devil's often in the detail again we're still waiting on the specific charges that's not stopping the rest of the planet from aining Delana Suza has more located on the outskirts of Paris this is the building where pavl durov is being questioned the 39-year-old founder of telegram saw his detention extended late Sunday by by the investigating magistrate in the case French media reported the Franco Russian billionaire was the subject of an arrest warrant issued by France authorities in Moscow meanwhile say they're waiting for more details we don't know exactly what DV is accused of we haven't heard any official statements before saying something we should wait for clarifying the situation for charges against him Dubai based telegram boasts nearly a billion users but the messaging app has been criticized for its failure to moderate extreme content while the company says it's got nothing to hide Russian lawmakers claim pavl durov is being made a pawn they have hostage and they will try to Blackmail Russia they will try to Blackmail all the users of telegram that now they're not going to just gain control but they will probably try to block the network here in Russia Moscow has leapt to pav durov's defense even though he left the country in 2014 after coming under pressure from local authorities while durov remains a Russian citizen he acquired French nationality in 2021 his initial period of questioning can last up to 96 hours after which pavl durov can be released or kept in custody and charged 96 hours until at least Wednesday morning uh Raina stoia your your reaction uh to that report well you know there are so many things one of them is how do we Define telegram meaning what is the legal framework that it should abide by right and this one is kind of a technical discussion but it comes from the question like if there are so many problems on the platform why haven't EU or American Justice systems reacted before let me asken D about that specific point uhen I was reading this morning that uh uh actually telegram does not fall under the remit of the Digital Services act because even though there's a billion users there's less than 45 million active users is that correct yes you have two layers of uh jurisdiction in Europe over this these limits is a pure European competency under this limit or for criminal offenses offenses it relies on member states jurisdictions and here we are not in a case of uh content regulation but criminal prosecution it's not a general regulatory case but a criminal one and not launched by European institutions but by a French public prosecutor in charge of a criminal proceeding it doesn't matter it doesn't deal with National Security issues as it could from a US perspective or a Chinese perspective or Russian perspective under French law this procedure is a criminal procedure led by a magistrates in charge of persecuting crime because a service provider does not collaborate with Justice investigations to provide the identity of criminals over its platform and so you heard Peter O'Brien at the outset eten uh describing that long wrap sheet the potential wrap sheet uh is it Justified this arrest of paval durov so the French law is organized exactly as some other laws under democracies when illegal content is uh at stake you first ask the publisher of this content to redraw the content if the publisher is not known you as the service provider hosting this content to withdraw any consent content and if this illegal content is still online because the service provider does not answer your requests you would consider that the service provider is an accomplish to the criminals and therefore because after several uh requests no valid answer was provided about the identity of criminals the service provider can be persecuted for the same level of uh of seriousness as the criminals themselves it happened to platforms before under us laws under FR laws under any democracy's laws when service providers has their role in intermediating Communications between people was not were not collaborative with the with the institutions they could be persecuted this is the case of Mr durov he was not afraid of it because he came in France for a night and he did not anticipate that he would be arrested it could have happened in any other country where you don't collaborate with Justice R to the French have it in for uh for for Pavel durov the the president's putting out a tweet earlier saying look this is a matter for the Judiciary I have nothing to do with it yeah so that was you know first off what legal framework we are talking about so you have what theen just described uh we can go further and discuss more about more overarching um and longer term things like the has telegram been uncooperative but so from what the Yeah the authorities are saying it has been and we've seen previous news reports you know in back in the time where uh telegram does not uh respond with information when asked to do so in the case of you know other judicial investigations but then what maon has been referring to earlier what you mentioned is the sort of outcry that this arrest is political right and honestly I'm not sure it is to start with however it will be because when you are the CEO of a social media platform let's say it that way when you are the CEO of telegram which boasts nearly a billion users and which is used in the war in the Russian war in Ukraine by both sides you are not just the CEO of you know some online messaging platform you hold a huge amount of power um in the informational ecosystem you as a person not bowing to demands from members you know from nation states or from EU member states and so on and so forth so even if in the beginning this was just quote unquote right a PR like a criminal prosecution it cannot not become geopolitical and do you think that the arrest was justified I'm not a judge honestly I'm not a judge to be you know having a say on that matter as of now uh there is however a question about how we do how do we as a society how do we hold those take owners accountable for what happens on the tools that they provide us with because again if they do not cooperate if they do not respect the law which is not an option right then they should be held accountable and if the criminal prosecution is the way to do this then so be it you know because I have another question which is also quite political and not so often spoken about which is that he holds a French citizenship which was granted to him under a very specific scheme which is the eminent you know French people let's talk about that in a moment okay but let me first because I I do want to get back to that specific point it's been a a point that's been highlighted again the last 48 hours uh Connor JS do do you agree with with Raina that uh uh you know let let the Justice run its course at the at this particular time and we'll find out specifically what it what the beef is of course um agree that Justice should run its course but I think the issues a little bit more complicated than that um let's scale it back down to the exact charges in France to start with I'm not a lawyer so please um do jump in um if if I'm wrong on this but for these criminal proceedings to have any Merit they need to have been directed um directly related to crimes that have taken place in France's judicary so in in in France um and he would have to um sorry um being him he would have to have direct knowledge of the things taking place for these criminal charges to be Amed if that turns out to be true then absolutely these um Justice should take its course but when we go back to the the The Wider question of content moderation um telegram itself has said that it is within the laws and as we sort of spoke about earlier it is under the Digital Services act it's not a a very large platform because it does come under that 45 million active users in the UK so it has met all of the laws there so the question of whether it should do more to moderate content isn't really one for the law if it's within jurisdiction do you buy that argument uh not so much uh the question of moderating content on your everyday's Life as a platform form is one question cooperating with uhon proceedings in order to provide the identity of a criminal is something else doesn't mean that you are not moderating contend it means that you are not providing the identity of a user and this is the whole question of telegram to what extent an encrypted service which is out of any control of any democracy or even of any authoritarian country can Define the freedom of expression outside of any law in fact the first question is what defines freedom of expression the answer is not the CEO of a company but the law what is the applicable law uh when any criminal proceeding is launched in France because of an effect on the French territory there is a competency and this is the case here third question is there an issue with the collaboration or cooperation with authorities it seems that yes but not only in France in some other countries the fourth question will be uh does it affect the political role of this platform being uh providing um an encrypted secured Services which is out of control of any state including Russia so is it a fair measure to take uh a legitimate measure to take right now because of oh the image is frozen there with Ian we'll try to to reconnect but this sort of carks back to the point I I'll put it to you Connor Jewish that rainy was making earlier just that uh telegram because for instance you gave the example of the war in Ukraine where it is the method of communication for both sides uh the boss of that company's got outsized power to whom is he answerable one of the technical details before we start with um telegram being referred to as an encrypted chat there's a bit of um a difference there only um one to one messages are encrypted and aren't encrypted by default a lot of the um the large scale chats or group chats or channels whatever they may be called in the app aren't actually um encrypted end end to end um so let's get that um just on the on the record there um I think where it gets involved in in other places really comes down to the question of how you view telegram which was briefly mentioned before is it a a social network or simply a messaging app um either way you've sort of got to ask yourself is the company behind it responsible for actions that are taking place on it um platforms like this messaging apps other social apps uh are commonly referred to as the the public digital Square the place for discourse to take place it's we've got to remember that individuals are you know participating in these messages are are providing this content not the CEO or anyone affiliated with telegram or other platform if I could just pick up on something that eten said earlier I thought it was just important to mention that it's unclear at this stage whether durov knew he was going to be arrested whether he was under an arrest warrant or not um we're hearing different things AFP said that the French news agency yeah they cited one investigator involved in the case saying that they were shocked that durov even decided to come to France given that he knew he was under an rant that completely the opposite to what the Russian Uh Russian media Outlets are saying they claim that um it was just minutes before his plane landed did he know was an arrest warrant actually issued so that is one big mystery in this whole series of mysteries uh we've got and then I thought I'd just mention as well yes that is among those uh charges that have been published by the Paris prosecutors number two refusal to communicate at the request of competent authorities information or documents necessary for carrying outs or and operating interceptions Allowed by the law so that's exactly what eten is referring to there when he talks about um uh you know durov had a responsibility to know these things were going on the French authorities will assume that he knew what was going on Purely because they had actually requested information about these uh criminal things that were going on on telegram yes so I'd like to get back to this whole qualification like is it an instant messageer messenging platform or is it a social media and so that's the whole DSA you know is it under DSA or DSA is the European the the eu's regulation yeah so bear with me it's a little technical I'll try not to make it too boring or scary so the DSA says you have enough users in the EU at least 45 million across the EU then you social network you should abide by specific obligations because you can't just you know come show your face and just do something something outside of any scrutiny right uh and so for telegram and WhatsApp by the way it's the same thing since they are they started as instant messaging platforms but they especially telegram have developed a crazy amount of very interesting social networking features and especially when I say especially telegram there is a very interesting uh Focus towards the user and the usability of the platform by the telegram you know engineering team so when this question comes through is are you a technical intermediary just sending messages from me to you encrypted or not that's irrelevant right now or are you something else are you a social network that you know and boasting which is more um at least 45 million users so Telegram says it's been very vague about the number of users they have with sometimes they hid the number they had published now they put something else and so on and so forth so the question so they say Okay since on our and WhatsApp is the same only the public facing channels will be considered as content to to define whether we can go under DSA or not and are there at least 45 million users active users in the EU you know interacting on on these channels so telegram says we have 41 million all together which when you boast nearly a billion users worldwide and you're telling me that public and or not you only have 41 million active users in the U that's kind of weird you know that's kind of really so the the European Commission decided that they kind of are not buying it so they launched an investigation in May of this year so two months ago to try and count if you like I mean to try and really examine what how it functions how many people it actually has for real and since they are publishing that they do moderation on their um dedicated page how does that happen because you know moderation when we we talking about this we're talking about processes and criteria by which someone somewhere decides what content goes and what content stays and the criteria are dictated by law you can't just be publishing anything I mean you can and that gets you in jail you know sort of so that's the whole discussion and why it's so Technical and goes beyond you know now the criminal persecution because this decide also the fate of other social networks that may be just as WhatsApp that may be right below but that also sets a precedent of sorts towards people who are already subjected to the DSA but are not really very much looking forward to complying I'm thinking Ellen musk and his well insulting if not injurious comment towards uh the EU commissioner earlier like few weeks ago uh in response to uh well requests to comply with the law you know yeah and it was interesting because the uh the outgoing European commission Bron uh was uh um Chas a bit by the commission itself told to tone it down uh because uh his uh he'd been told uh he he had put out a a warning to musk saying uh uh that you uh you either um you either put um a lid on it a bit or else and that didn't go well down well with the European uh commission uh saying that uh well it's not ready uh there's still the the wait let's see what it goes through don't don't proceed with haste basically is what they said to to that commissioner just the very the latest from the commission um actually in reaction to the arest of drov they told us this week um that they're still considering for for now at least telegram is having 42 million active users in the EU so not still not a a very let's talk about that for a second because uh this you know this is a a social medium that's gone from strength to strength uh the CEO uh talking up plans for an upcoming flotation on the stock market uh telegram is a little bit different from some of its Rivals Kathy Clifford has more on that telegram was launched in 2013 By pavl jov The 39 9-year-old billionaire dubbed the Russian Mark Zuckerberg he left Russia in 2014 after refusing government demands to shut down opposition communities on his former Facebook like platform VK inspiring him to launch an encrypted messaging app alongside his brother today telegram claims almost 1 billion users the platform allows them to post footage images and comments on channels it's built its USP on protecting freedom of expression user confidentiality and extreme secure encryption what's marked it out from Rivals like Google or meta is telegram's refusal to hand over user data to authorities except in a few rare cases this has attracted a wide range of users from activists in authoritarian states to conspiracy theorists and criminals as well as governments around the world which means the platform's encryption system now safeguards the most sensitive geopolitical information it's particularly influential in Russia Ukraine and neighboring states where some of its news channels are more popular than traditional media Russia has abandoned efforts to block Telegram and it is now used by both the government and the opposition it also plays a key role in moscow's war against Ukraine with bloggers from both sides documenting the conflict the platform has long been criticized for failing to moderate extreme content French prosecutors accused jov of not cooperating with authorities pointing to contempt involving organized crime glorification of terrorism and cyber bullying telegram has said it can't be held responsible for what its users do a defense long used by Tech platforms International experts are watching the investigation closely if it's not telegram we'll see a shift to other messaging networks there will always be a clever entrepreneur and even clever malicious user that will find a different mechanism by which you communicate durov set up in Dubai in 2017 at a distance from tougher regulation in the EU and the us though telegram's legal base is in Belgium it doesn't have enough active EU users to be overseen by EU Regulators yeah we were just talking about there with the digital Services act it's interesting coming up this this question of how much you moderate it uh there were those riots in the UK uh earlier this month I know uh uh Connor Jewish there were riots where where you are in Harley pool uh the independent quoted one academic who pointed out how the apps moderation team is less than a dozen compared to Facebook's tens of thousands of moderators is that a problem I think this comes down to a very complex issue when it comes out to content moderation um the content moderation is is necessary that's um something you can't you can't get around and 12 people for for a platform that's got uh 45 less than 45 42 million users in the year you alone it's not it's not really not really enough but when it comes down to the issue of concept moderation things get a little bit more complicated um it's interesting to see what precedence might be set by removing certain types of content that may be um disagreeing with with others content moderation certainly certainly necessary but where do you draw the line between people are are discussing a certain topic or discourse or or actually inciting citing violence particularly with these riots where's the difference between someone discussing What's happen versus encouraging people to go and write it's been quite confusing with with Twitter um now X and people being arrested with that here in the UK and there are reports of some people being being arrested or charged for simply sharing videos of the riots going on rather than inciting the violence or encouraging people to take part where there's obviously a clear distinction there and that seems to be somewhere that content moderation is failing on existing platforms so I think it's a little bit more complicated than just saying it needs to happen we need more content more right but there was there was false information that was disseminated over social media be it on Twitter or telegram uh talking about mlims responsible for that stabbing spree that took place in Southport and nightly rioting that was organized in a lot of these cities including where where you are right now there should be consequences for those who disseminate false information totally but those consequences belong at the the individuals um disting this information not the the platform provider if um there was a take take the riot for example taking place outside should should the mayor of Harley pool um be responsible for the actions of these people no of of course not so the same should be applied to a digital setting of course these individuals should be should be prosecuted but the the people behind the way they're communicating should not I believe that's a pretty slippery slope aen is back with usen your thoughts on this uh who's responsible when there's uh hate speech and organizing of these far-right gangs uh in the UK for instance on a regulatory standpoint when you raise an illegal content to a platform depending on the seriousness of the legal content you have more or less time to cut the content as a platform if you don't you would be responsible for still dissin disseminating illegal content as an individual you are also responsible for what you are doing with illegal content you could be prosecuted however since it would take weeks or months to investigate for public prosecutor the first way to act is to ask the platform to be uh diligent and react quickly when there is any um any information or alert raised with the platform so both are responsible first to react immediately the platform when it is for serious content or serious infringement and also the individual it doesn't mean one should replace the other but both have responsibilities including platforms Rea stul yeah so to to rephrase and add to what Ian was just saying it a platform that allows you to reach 50,000 or 200,000 people with your video It Doesn't materialize out of thin air so you can't just stick it with the good Joe you know he shared it and bl too bad so he's only he's responsible no he is responsible to have started it but since you allow the means of this to propagate you cannot be just like hands off it's not my fault it's the Regular Joe that that did it and the question about moderation has been there ever since the internet started right I mean in the beginning it was just volunteers it was us who were kind of trying to you know to down other people talking but today it's unimaginable with millions of people or even more billions to just rely on selfregulation of sorts so that's why when we talk about moderation we talk about processes and we talk about criteria of what goes and what stays and that's also why you need humans to look at the video the the whatever it is because humans don't live in a vacuum you know they they they don't live in a bubble there are cultural historical references and subtleties and so on and so forth if I tell you here that's a video and that's an image and 70% of it is blood if it's 70% of it is blood then remove it yeah but that may be an artistic you know depiction of something and 70% or more is red paint so that's why you need humans and I agree that 12 people people is I mean my gosh that's ridiculous right so that's where we also need transparency from people like Duru but also Ellen musk and others to know how many moderators there are also there are already there are almost a billion users worldwide on what languages they speak um how much are they paid uh is their you know psychological support for those people because I mean we've documented researchers have documented post-traumatic stress disorders for people moderating you know terrorist content when we had D being very active you had videos of beheadings and you know of very gruesome things all day long so you can't just pay you know those little hands and pay them below the minimum wage and just let them do the job or have and again you know 12 people the problem is the internet and we've been talking about it is transnational and you could say paval durv is kind of This Global citizen isn't he he's you know Russian but uh uh based in Dubai legally domiciled his company is in in Brussels uh he has a now a French passport he's got a passport from the Caribbean y uh soara passport sinkits and NIS passport French passport yeah so you know the question is to to what Authority do these people answer he said that he moved to Dubai and moved his op company's operations to Dubai uh this was in his interview with Tua Coulson one of the few interviews he's given back in April um because there was a lack of interest from the authorities in what uh telegram was doing um I think without wanting to get too conceptual here we can't simply talk about things that happen on the internet as a whole the way you design your app is really important um and there's a reason why WhatsApp reduced its uh the number of people you can forward a message to for instance um telegram as we've said allows these huge channels um of hang on is whats did WhatsApp reduce that because it's afraid of us Regulators it was it was told to do so because it was it was feared to be propagating fake news I think it was in response to riots in India um because you don't have the same virality phenomenon if you like like the way you have it on Twitter ex Twitter for example you just can send messages but there is no algorithm just to simplify it immensely that will kind of snowball and make something become very visible right but the thing is that the more you can send and forward to people imagine you have a group of 50,000 people and each and everyone does that to three persons you know it it snowballs immensely so that's where this kind of reduction happened to contain spread given the platform's features and for years telegram has been accused of being far more virent when it comes to these large channels of propaganda of um terrorist messaging of child sexual abuse material of uh drug running uh gangs you know it's it's faced these accusations for years and years and years and it is around the fact that it's designed to be as as viral as possible uh Connor Jewish uh is that something that should be regulated how viral uh a platform can be that's something that's um extremely hard to answer I me this content moderation debate is um is also extremely hard to answer because different places have uh have different laws like over in the US um platforms aren't required to remove content unless it's directly incites violence or involves illegal activities so H spech isn't always necessarily going to have to be removed um so and considering these requirements specifically around forwarding uh I think it's important to draw the line between where can a feature be misused versus where is this feature adding benefits to users I don't think that's something that could be settled um settled is there a difference is there a difference Conor between Telegram and you know we've just referenced uh uh whats uh We've referenced Twitter what's the specificity of telegram it's more I would argue it's still a messaging app at heart if you ask yourself a basic question what do people do on telegram it send messages but it does have a few more social uh features than WhatsApp or Alternatives built in there's the announcement um there are channels where we can set up like almost really large scale groups akin to to messaging boards almost and there are more social features when it comes to reacting liking content and that sort of thing and of course the forwarding roles are different we've heard one argument that's been uh put forth uh by Defenders of pavl durov saying look you've got a war in Ukraine and both sides are using it that proves that it's an impartial platform uh no it doesn't prove anything because uh durov doesn't choose what his users are talking about they may sell weapons they may save democracy they may defend UK ukrainians they may do whatever they want the two specificities of uh in of telegram are first technical robustness of encryption which is out out of control of any state second headquartered in Dubai which is not for climate but for the kind of neutrality between China Europe and the USA and third the existing the core existing reason of telegram is to provide trust that any uh communication shared between users may be out of control of any state this is why it is a location for criminals this is also why it is a location for people um nourishing freedom of expression both are on telegram so D did not choose that but benefits from the technical specificities of his service and this is why each state over this planet would like to have to regulate this uh service but here to come back to the the arrest of Mr jurov we're not dealing with regulatory uh enforcement we are dealing with criminal enforcement u based on rules that were adopted in 1996 not under the daa though the the interesting debate about regulation from Europe or from any other region is out of the scope of the current situation of Mr dof even if it is very interesting for social media regulation but here he has to answer as an intermediary to a to a criminal judge for criminal prosecution and and and if he's if he's felt a bit of huus flying in on his private jet to Paris for a Saturday night dinner it's also because and Raina was talking about earlier he's a French national in 2021 durov uh followed in the footsteps of snap supro obtaining French citizenship the question is why Lon Damu listed the ways and uh found that there's only one procedure by which durov could have been naturalized that of so-called Foreigner ameritus do we know why he wanted to be French and why he was fast-tracked uh this citizenship he wanted to find a neutral way of living his life in peace still having his company headquartered in Dubai but however being far away from uh the USA far away from Russia so it's it was quite a it's not Switzerland it it was in for him to be part of the European Union because it it may be a place of balance where you don't have any huge headquartered service providers uh as platforms so it was quite a fair and and smart move I would say uh you can choose where you headquarter your company uh you could also almost when you are in his position choose uh which which citizen you are part of which citizenship and a point on the Rian attitude full of uh cism maybe he was a Russian citizen but I would not give uh credit to the freedom of speech in Russia and also uh to the idea that he could be protected by Russian law because he is protected by the fact that he is outside of Russia and it is the history of this companion of this young man so that's why he wanted perhaps to be a French citizen but why was he granted that citizen well that's the $1 billion doll or Euros question right I mean he doesn't even speak French I mean the advantage is for him becoming a certificate he had to supply a B1 certificate in French we know that he's got that because that's been reported but that's not a high level of French yeah so that's I mean mine is way better but yeah so that's that's the kind of situations you know that we don't know and it's a very uncomfortable question to be asked you know why did he get that citizen ship I mean at least the snap's CEO speaks French um so I don't know seriously I don't know what I know however is that we're I mean even if this is again just a criminal prosecution now just quote unquote again um it will it is blowing off limits about so many things and we will continue having that discussion you know about also are other social media CEOs liable when look at look at Snapchat we have we just talked about it there is so much drug and and you know spam and scummy schemes on Snapchat so okay they're uh subject to DSA but again criminal prosecution aside shouldn't we do the same thing with the CEO you know the Snapchat CEO because we could Bri we almost out of time but I just want to could this be a turning point this this this arrest I don't know I'm not going to speculate on whether there'll be other arrests um but um I just wanted to also add jov's own words on his own French uh nationality um a year after he received it he posted a message on telegram which I mean can only be described as flippant he describes it as sort of feeling in a form almost as a joke um to sort of frenchify his name and that's how he got French citizenship and honestly I I'm not sure it will um make a lot of French people enamored with him particularly those who have had to had to fight fight tooth and nail to get their own citizenship all right well unfortunately we'll leave it there so much more to talk about as this case unfolds and as we find out what the specific charges are Peter O'Brien Raina stambula I want to thank as well a for joining us from AO Conor Jewish in Harley pool England thank you for being with us here in the France 24 debate