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ROME – Corrado Augias He leaves early in the morning with the French Legion of Honor in his backpack. He keeps it in a red leather box with a gold frame, which he opens with care and sadness in his garden in Rome. It is an order established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, when he was consul. “It is the greatest honor of the French Republic, a high recognition of military courage, that is why there is the red ribbon, which recalls blood. But it is also a recognition of social and civil merits ”, he explains. He doesn’t want to make it a personal matter: “I don’t even remember the exact year I received it. I was very happy, of course, but my sour gesture was inevitable. I dedicate it to the memory of Jules regeni, the young academic tortured and murdered in Egypt, the details of those tortures were revealed by the Rome Prosecutor’s Office just as President Al-Sisi received this same Legion of Honor from Macron. But I also dedicate it to France, the homeland of my family and of the Enlightenment that illuminated the world, but that sometimes needs to be revived.
The gesture is the return of the Legion of Honor to the French embassy in Rome, announced in an open letter yesterday on the cover of Republic. With a tweet, the ambassador of France Christian masset He responded to that outburst: “I have great respect for Corrado Augias, France is at the forefront of human rights and does not compromise. More cases were discussed during President Al-Sisi’s visit to Paris, in the most appropriate and effective way. “
The memory of Giulio ruling restores the Legion d’honor
by Corrado Augias
When Augias arrives at the Palazzo Farnese, Masset does more, calling him into his study for an interview. The journalist and writer goes up and down in a quarter of an hour. He says, besieged by the Italian and French cameras: “The ambassador could not have done it, but he wanted to receive me in his wonderful studio in what is the most beautiful embassy in the world. The interview was cordial and formal. Friendly in shades. Formal in the statements. He told me that he understands but does not agree with my gesture. He repeated to me that France has always been at the forefront in the defense of human rights. France was born as a nation with the declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen. I objected that these rights could be defended in a more visible way. I reminded him that when the dictator Gaddafi arrived in Italy he was received in the Quirinale, with the gang. But no decorations were delivered. There is a way to welcome all heads of state without going overboard. My idea is that Macron with the Legion of Honor in Al-Sisi has exaggerated. So much so that the French newspapers kept the news in a low voice, while the Egyptians gave it a prominent role ”. Augias continues: “As the ambassador told me that in these interviews there is a reserved part that can have an effect, I asked him if they could refer to the Bolognese student Patrick Zaky. He replied ‘I don’t know’, but as if to say ‘even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell’. It is my inference, but whether or not there will be these effects we will know in the next few days ”.
The former CGIL leader Sergio Cofferati, the counselor of the Court of Accounts Rossana Rummo, the former minister Giovanna melandri me Luciana Castellina They said they will follow the example of Corrado Augias, there are many Italians who have received the French Legion of Honor. Among the politicians: Enrico and Gianni Letta, Romano Prodi and Massimo D’Alema. And then Paolo Conte and Nanni Moretti, Ludovico Einaudi, Claudio Satamaria and Stefano Accorsi. “Returning the Legion is a symbolic and sentimental gesture – says Augias -. I realize that this is a very delicate matter. On the one hand, there is the gesture made by an individual, responsible only for himself. On the other hand, there is the system of states and governments that have other responsibilities. If only by hypothesis we cut all relations with Egypt tomorrow morning, there would be at least six states that would replace us. Realpolitik clashes with the feelings, justice and pain of a family. This opens a topic that we have been debating for twenty-five centuries ”. Is Italy wrong in the Regeni and Zaky cases? “He faces the devil’s dilemma: whatever he does, he is wrong.”
Legion of Honor, Cofferati and Castellina resign: “Paris tramples human rights”
by our correspondent Anais Ginori
Augias’s gesture caused a great echo. Giulio Regeni’s father, Claudio, thanked him.
Legion of Honor, after the great refusal of Augias: what it is and who got it in the past
Regeni case, Corrado Augias returns the Legion of Honor: “Macron should not have given it to Al-Sissi”
by Corrado Augias
