The Daily Mail has been accused of paying €50,000 (£35,000) to obtain video of one of the terrorist attacks in Paris that had been encrypted by French police to prevent it being made public.

Representatives of the Mail are then believed to have destroyed the original source material from the CCTV cameras inside the besieged Paris cafe to ensure no other media organisation could obtain it.

The video, shared 16,000 times since being published on 18 November, shows the scene inside the Casa Nostra in the seconds running up to and including the attack. It also reveals how one woman’s life appears to have been saved when the terrorist’s machine gun jammed as he tried to shoot her.

Freelance journalist Djaffer Ait Aoudia told Monday night’s edition of Petit Journal on Canal+ and the Guardian that the Mail representative had been told about the need for a “hacker” when obtaining the footage. Part of his film, shot secretly, shows a French speaker talking in English about a computer expert who is “going to come ... in an hour .... like a hacker”.

The Daily Mail denies that the footage its representatives saw was encrypted and says it was never told that the film should not leave the premises.

In a statement, a spokesman said: “There is nothing controversial about the Mail’s acquisition of this video, a copy of which the police already had in their possession. It was obtained against stiff competition from French and international media outlets and provided a vital perspective on a massive global news story.

“The publication of the video – one of many that emerged in the aftermath of the events in Paris – on MailOnline and stills in the paper was demonstrably in the public interest. The images have since been aired on TV, online and in print in France and around the world.”

Following publication, it added: “We were shown this video a number of times by the café owner and it was not encrypted. We were told the police had taken a copy of the footage and let the owner keep the original. We were never told the video was not to leave the premises. An IT technician was asked by the owner to re-start the computer after he had turned it off and forgotten his password.”

A version of the Daily Mail’s footage was temporarily embedded on the Guardian website but has now been removed.

Djaffer Ait Aoudia was at the Casa Nostra in the days following the attacks to work on a story for Swiss television.

The Mail journalists appear to have thought Aoudia, who shares Algerian heritage with the cafe owner, was a friend of the restaurant staff. The restaurant owner was unaware that Aoudia was filming with a hidden camera.

His footage reveals that the bargaining by the Mail to obtain the surveillance video started at €12,000 and ended when the offer reached €50,000.

However, the images had apparently been encrypted by Parisian police to prevent them being posted online or broadcast.



Aoudia told the Guardian: “While I was there, the police showed up and asked to see the CCTV. The owner called out the technician from the company that ran the CCTV and the police viewed it and went away with a USB stick of the footage they were interested in. They asked to technician to encrypt the hard disk and said ‘this now falls under the confidentiality of the investigation, it must remain here’.”

The Casa Nostra owner was filmed explaining to the Daily Mail representative that he had called a friend who was an IT expert and would be able to decrypt the video, which allowed him to sell it.

The cafe owner declined to comment when contacted by Canal+.

Aoudia’s footage depicts the owner showing the Mail journalists and their translator the surveillance video on his smartphone. One can be heard asking in English how many bullets hit the cafe.

Freelance journalist Djaffer Ait Aoudia on the Canal+ show Le Petit Journal on Monday night. Photograph: Canal+

Aoudia said that he went back to the Casa Nostra several times on the Sunday and Monday. “On the Monday, two girls were there from the Daily Mail and they were already discussing the CCTV with the owner. They called a more senior journalist, Stephen, who clearly must have called the editor and got his go-ahead.



“The sum went up from €12,000 to €50,000. The Daily Mail wanted just to pay part and bring the rest later, but the owner said no way. So it took them 24 hours to get the money together and they were back at the restaurant to conclude the deal at midday on Tuesday.”

The freelance journalist said he heard the cafe’s owner telling the Daily Mail team at least four or five times that the police had said the video was covered by confidentiality rules covering a police investigation and was not to leave the premises. This is denied by the Mail.

Aoudia’s film refers to the owner’s computer expert friend as “like a hacker” in English. “Then when the owner’s hacker friend showed up to break the encryption, everyone lied to him about why it was necessary,” he told the Guardian.

Given the sum the Mail representatives insisted on exclusivity and insisted that the hard disk containing the video be destroyed “in front of them, smashed on the ground”, Aoudia told the TV show.



Asked by Petit Journal presenter Yann Barthès why he had decided to tell his story, Aoudia replied: “I think we are in a very painful period, a very difficult and sensitive period. People can buy pictures, of course people do buy pictures, we’ve seen that.

“But we are in an atmosphere of terrorism here and I think people should maybe think twice about broadcasting this kind of material – the more so because at least until it was broadcast, it was confidential to an ongoing investigation.”