User:Y2re6z7/David Thomson (journaliste)

David Thomson (born April 23, 1980) is a Franco-British journalist, who is currently senior international correspondent for Radio France Internationale and spent years building contacts within jihadi circles and covering the rise of islamic terrorism in France. He is the author of the best-selling book The Returned: They Left to Wage Jihad, Now They're Back and was labeled France hottest intellectual by Foreign Policy in 2017.

Biography
Early Life

Thomson was born in France in 1980 to a British father and French mother. He grew up in the outskirts of Paris in a middle-class catholic family. He holds a master degree in broadcast journalism from the Journalism School of Bordeaux Aquitaine Institut de journalisme Bordeaux Aquitaine and a master degree of political science from the Institute of Political Studies of Aix en Provence (Sciences Po Aix) with his thesis dedicated to the heritage of Jacques Foccart.

Career

Thomson began his career in Paris in 2008, working in radio for Radio France, Radio France Internationale and RMC, in television for France Television, France 24 and M6 and for the newspapers Libération and 20Minutes.

In 2010, Radio France Internationale appointed him as their Tunis-based correspondent during the Tunisian revolution of 2010-2011. He also worked as a foreign correspondent for Radio France and France 24. Thomson covered the 2012 attack of the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia when hundreds of protesters ransacked the embassy in their fury over a film denigrating the Prophet Mohammad. He sustained serious buckshot injuries to the legs while filming in Siliana in 2012. He directed the documentary Tunisia : The Jihad Temptation about the Tunisian jihadi movement Ansar al Charia for ARTE Television in 2013 and he was awarded the Ilaria-Alpi prize for Best international TV Reportage. .

In 2011, Thomson reported from the front line on the war in Libya, both with the armed rebel forces and with the Kadhafi regime. He also covered the political transitions in Tunisia, in Egypt and in Mali.

ISIS reporting

In 2014, after a year of extensive investigation, the only one on this subject at the beginning of 2016 , Thomson gathered around twenty direct testimonies from French jihadists who had gone to fight in Syria and told their story in the book Les Français jihadistes (The French jihadis)  (L'Express-BFM TV Prize 2014 ). This book is the first published on the phenomenon of jihadism in the Iraqi-Syrian zone and the Islamic State. Two years after its publication, it is still considered "the work of reference" by the newspaper Le Monde , to understand jihadi mechanics. According to the France Télévisions news site, "David Thomson has quickly become a reference, through his knowledge of jihadist networks thanks to his presence in the field and on social networks" . In this book, he is the first to alert on the terrorist risk represented by the French jihadis who left for Syria for France. He is mocked and discredited for this during a prime-time television show in 2014. Three years later, he denounces a denial in France and Tunisia on jihadist issues. Vanity Fair magazine compared him to "a Galileo obstinate in repeating what we did not want to hear about jihadists".

The information on the French jihadist milieu that he disseminates daily on his Twitter account followed by more than 150,000 subscribers is regularly repeated and chronicled in the media,. This account is among the best informed about ISIS-claimed attacks. In 2016, his Facebook account was suspended by mistake, a suspension denounced by the association Reporters Without Borders,.

Faced with what he calls "jihadoscepticism", Thomson expressed his fear of jihadist attacks in France as early as 2014. In April 2014, he is a guest of Frédéric Taddeï on the show Ce soir (ou jamais !)  where he is strongly contradicted by the other guests and in particular by the sociologist Raphaël Liogier after having declared that "for jihadis, France is the enemy of Islam and Allah. In their minds, hitting France is legitimate." In December 2016, upon the release of his second book, he recalled: "It's obvious today but it was unspeakable at the time. What blindness, when I think of it!" Asked in August 2015 about the possible infiltration of migrant flows from Libya by terrorists, he tweeted that "From #Libya, no migrant boat has yet left an area held by #ISIS",, , adding however that "such an option is also not entirely excluded."

On this subject, David Thomson works only from a network of sources on the ground, including jihadis, and refuses to collaborate with the intelligence, police or justice services, a position which sometimes earns him critics, but one the journalist owns, arguing that "the only way to understand how one becomes a jihadi is to ask them the question". After the Brussels attacks in March 2016, he denounces a "circular circulation of non-expertise" in the media and its influence on public debate and political decision-making in the field of terrorism, citing " retired police officers sometimes disconnected from the reality of the files" of the moment, or agents briefly assigned in departments where they were not always in charge of jihadi issues.

At the end of 2016, after five years of work on jihadism from primary sources, more than two years of interviews , with French men and women returning from Syria and Iraq , he released the book Les Revenants (The Returned: They Left to Wage Jihad, Now They're Back) which became a best-seller in a few days and which earned him to be described in the press as "an anthropologist journalist". "A rare immersion in the world of French jihadi" according to the newspaper Le Monde, "an exceptional document which plunges the reader into the heads of the French soldiers of Daesh" according to Le Figaro. On December 12, 2016, he received the Grand Prix de la presse internationale Challenging the effectiveness of de-radicalization centers, he says, “It all comes down to two things: counseling and the ability to find a job. We do not reintegrate by marginalizing. But who wants to risk using them? You cannot de-radicalize in a prison. »

Victim of death threats, he is placed in police protection by the Service de la protection de la police nationale (SDLP) in 2016,. He then decides a year later to move to the United States,. After five years working exclusively on jihadism, he wants to change his journalistic focus: "When you are immersed in it, it becomes your normality. I have been bathing in it from night to morning for years: it's still crazy, but at the same time it's my reality. That's also why I have to stop! »

Awards

In 2017, Thomson is awarded the Albert-Londres prize, the highest French journalistic distinction, for his book Les Revenants /The Returned and he confirms his wish to stop working on the subject and become a United States correspondent for RFI.

In January 2018, Thomson co-signs a column denouncing the pressure exerted by Vincent Bolloré and Vivendi on the media investigating their activities in Africa.

On December 8, 2018, the La plume et l'épée prize is awarded to him for his book Les Revenants /The Returned.

The term "The Returned", inspired by the title of his book devoted to jihadis returning to France, gradually gained ground in public debate to such an extent that it ended up appearing in the dictionaries of Robert illustré and Petit Robert.

Court

David Thomson is sued for defamation by Christian Estrosi, for having quoted in his book Les Revenants/The Returned a repentant jihadi declaring: "I blame the mayor of Nice because he was aware of all this, he let it happen", in reference to the activities of Omar Omsen, the main jihadist recruiter in the city of Nice. He is acquitted on February 7, 2019 by the Nice Criminal Court. In December 2020, the Court of Appeal again overturns the conviction of the RFI journalist, making this decision final.

Publications

 * 2014 : Les Français jihadistes, Paris, Les Arènes, 227 p. ISBN 978-2-35204-327-0
 * 2016 : Les Français jihadistes, 2e édition, Paris, Les Arènes, 300 p. ISBN 978-2352044758
 * 2016 : Les Revenants, Paris, Le Seuil - collection « Les Jours », 294 p. ISBN 978-2-02134-939-9. Grand prix de la presse internationale 2016
 * 2018: The Returned: They Left to Wage Jihad, Now They're Back, Polity 1st edition, 240 p. ISBN 978-1509526918

Television

 * Tunisia : the jihad temptation, documentary directed by David Thomson, Gwenlaouen Le Gouil, Hamdi Tlili and Nicolas Baudry d'Asson.