French leader's campaign emails published by WikiLeaks

By Hajer M'tiri

PARIS

WikiLeaks on Monday released over 21,000 “verified” emails from French leader Emmanuel Macron's presidential election campaign.

In a statement WikiLeaks claimed it had verified the emails through its Domain Keys Identified Mail system from nearly 72,000 messages initially leaked in May, just two days before the runoff vote in the French presidential election.

"The emails range from 20 March 2009 to 24 April 2017," read the statement. The documents are now part of a searchable archive.

There was no immediate reaction to the news by the Elysee.

During the campaign, Macron's team was the target of massive cyber-hacks. His staff pointed fingers at Russian hackers and even refused accreditation to the Russian state-funded Sputnik and RT news outlets, which it accused of spreading Russian propaganda and fake news.

Just two days before the decisive May 7 election runoff, Macron’s campaign announced it was the victim of an anonymous massive and co-ordinated hack as thousands of emails and electronic documents, mixed with false ones, were released online.

Macron's campaign said the documents "were obtained ... after personal and professional emails of several leaders of the movement" were hacked.

Analysts said the source could have come from a group tied to Russian military intelligence. However, Moscow rejected the allegations.

France's cybersecurity agency ANSSI opened an investigation.