Twenty four years after the deadly attack by the French secret services against Greenpeace’s flagship the Rainbow Warrior it seems France and its nuclear industry is once again caught up in a major scandal involving Greenpeace.

A week ago the French media reported that the largely state-owned French electricity company EDF has been caught spying on Greenpeace France. Two senior EDF officials have been indicted in a French court. Now investigators are looking into “fraudulent intrusion” into the computers of nuclear campaigners in the Greenpeace office in Paris.

“Greenpeace is a non-violent environmental organization,” said Pascal Husting, director of Greenpeace France. “The fact that we are being treated like terrorists because we dare to question nuclear energy shows just how frightened the nuclear industry is of transparency and a democratic debate.”

“Forged in the furnace of the cold war the nuclear power is inextricably part of the military nuclear industry, the two are inseparable. Governments and electricity companies around the world should reject EDF and Sarkozy’s pro-nuclear overtures and offers of this dangerous and anti-democratic technology. Instead they should embrace an energy revolution based on renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency. Technologies that will genuinely enhance our energy security and help to avert catastrophic climate change,” concluded Husting.

Pierre François, one of the indicted men, was according to Mediapart the man who led the spying cell and the one responsible for developing EDF’s intelligence activities to undermine campaigns of anti-nuclear activism. François and his spies have apparently infiltrated several anti-nuclear groups in France and reportedly sometimes with the blessing of the French secret services.