France

Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish Alsatian artillery officer in the French Army, was convicted of treason on 22 December 1894 on the basis of a handwritten document (bordereau) wrongly attributed to him, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. The real spy was Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. In 1896 Lt Col Georges Picquart discovered the bordereau's handwriting matched Esterhazy, but military hierarchy suppressed the finding. Émile Zola's open letter J'Accuse...! (L'Aurore, 13 January 1898) brought the case to international attention. Esterhazy fled to England in 1898. After a 1899 Rennes retrial reaffirmed conviction with mitigation and a presidential pardon, Dreyfus was fully rehabilitated by the Cour de cassation in 1906.

Between October 1994 and March 1997, the Order of the Solar Temple — a syncretic neo-Templar cult led by Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret — was responsible for 74 deaths across Switzerland, Quebec, and France. Victims died by ritual gunshot wounds, sleeping-pill poisoning, and fire in a pattern suggesting staged "transits" to a higher plane. Conspiracy claims of insurance fraud motivation and links to organised crime or intelligence services have not been substantiated. The deaths are confirmed as cult-directed murder-suicides.

Germanwings Flight 9525, an Airbus A320 registration D-AIPX, was deliberately crashed into the French Alps on 24 March 2015 by co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, killing all 150 on board. Captain Patrick Sondenheimer was locked out of the cockpit; Lubitz set the autopilot to 100 feet and held the descent until impact. The BEA final report (March 2016) confirmed deliberate action. Lubitz had concealed a history of depression treatment and suicidal ideation from aviation medical authorities, enabling him to hold an unrestricted licence. The crash drove major changes to cockpit access rules and medical disclosure requirements across European and global aviation.

In April 2021, a New York Times investigation revealed that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had exchanged private text messages with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla that were instrumental in driving the EU's €71B vaccine contract signed May 2021. The EU Commission refused FOI requests on the grounds that the texts were not official records. EU Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly found maladministration in January 2022. The European Public Prosecutor's Office opened a criminal investigation in January 2023. The European Court of Justice issued a partial ruling in May 2025 ordering some disclosure. Von der Leyen was re-confirmed as Commission President in June 2024.

Between 7 April and 15 July 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandan Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed in approximately 100 days — one of the fastest mass killings in recorded history. UNAMIR force commander General Roméo Dallaire sent a 'genocide fax' to UN headquarters on 11 January 1994 warning of weapons caches and planned mass killings; the cable was suppressed by the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations under Kofi Annan and Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who ordered Dallaire not to act. France's Opération Turquoise (22 June–21 August 1994) has been accused of protecting Hutu Power perpetrators rather than civilians. The Mucyo Commission (Rwanda, 2008) accused French officials of direct complicity. The Duclert Commission (France, 2021) found France bore 'overwhelming responsibility' but stopped short of a formal complicity finding.

Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary President of Burkina Faso, was killed on 15 October 1987 along with twelve bodyguards by a commando unit in Ouagadougou. His close associate Blaise Compaoré took power the same day. In April 2022 a Burkinabé military tribunal convicted Compaoré and security chief Hyacinthe Kafando in absentia, sentencing both to life imprisonment. A 2015 forensic exhumation confirmed multiple gunshot wounds consistent with execution. The assassination and Compaoré's role are confirmed by court verdict.

Air France Concorde Flight 4590 crashed near Gonesse, France, on 25 July 2000, killing all 109 people on board and four on the ground. The BEA concluded that a titanium strip shed by a Continental Airlines DC-10 on the same runway punctured a Concorde tyre, whose debris ruptured a fuel tank, causing an engine fire and loss of control on takeoff. Continental Airlines and maintenance engineer John Taylor were convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2010; the convictions were overturned on appeal in 2012. Conspiracy claims centre on whether Concorde's known pre-existing structural vulnerabilities were concealed by Air France and Aerospatiale, and whether the Continental debris finding scapegoated a foreign carrier.

Air France Flight 447 disappeared over the South Atlantic on 1 June 2009, killing all 228 people on board. The BEA final report (2012) concluded that icing of Thales AA pitot tubes caused unreliable airspeed readings, triggering pilot loss of situational awareness and a sustained aerodynamic stall. Pre-crash documents indicate Airbus and Air France were aware of pitot-tube icing problems and had issued advisories without mandatory replacement orders. Lawsuits alleging corporate concealment of known defects are ongoing. The claim of deliberate industrial cover-up is partially supported by evidence of known pre-crash deficiencies; allegations of criminal concealment remain legally contested.

Operation Gladio was a NATO-coordinated programme of clandestine "stay-behind" networks established across Western Europe from the late 1940s, designed to conduct sabotage and resistance operations in the event of a Soviet invasion. The networks were armed, trained, and funded by CIA and MI6 and operated in coordination with national intelligence services. Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti disclosed the Italian network to parliament in August 1990. The Italian parliamentary commission and subsequent national investigations in Belgium, France, Germany, and Switzerland confirmed the programme's existence across the continent.

The 1997 death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a Paris car crash has spawned decades of conspiracy theories alleging assassination by British intelligence, the Royal Family, or other state actors — most forcefully championed by Mohamed Al-Fayed, father of Dodi Fayed who died in the same crash.