French press review 25 January 2013

France welcomes back Florence Cassez. The papers look ahead to a demo in favour of gay marriage. Did a controversial public figure benefit from a little too much state generosity? And how French football clubs are running low on funds.

Florence Cassez, the Frenchwoman who was imprisoned in Mexico for several years for being linked through her boyfriend to a kidnapping scam and who always claimed she was innocent, has arrived back in France.

That means that most of each important French media outlets will have its "exlusive" feature for us. Tabloid Aujourd'hui en France notes that the woman who was once nicknamed "the kidnapper" got a welcome similar to that of a superstar when she arrived in France.

"Florence Cassez to spend time with her loved ones" writes Catholic La Croix while Le Figaro is going for "Florence Cassez , seven years later: Freedom".

Le Figaro looks at how presidents François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy handled this case. The conservative paper gives most of the credit to the latter. It refers to the freeing of Cassez as "an involuntary coproduction by the two men".

It also looks at the impact Cassez's liberation has had on the Mexican legal system as well as the Mexican police. The misconduct of both of these entities are seen as being responsible for the jailing of an "innocent Cassez". 

" We can't ask the Mexican people to bring about change, if the legal rights of victims aren't respected," one judge is quoted as saying.

Communist L'Humanité is going for "Back in Paris: The intense happiness of Florence Cassez", while Libération quotes Cassez on its front page as saying that there are thousands of cases like hers. It refers to her as someone who has escaped an experience that is common among Mexicans and reminds its readers that thousands are still stuck in Mexican jails following admissions that were acquired through torture.

Catholic La Croix , looks at those who this weekend will be marching in the streets of France in favour of marriage for everyone regardless of weather they are of the same sex. I'll let you guess what is likely to be on the front pages of Monday's newspaper. 

Libération has graced its front page with caricatures of Sarkozy, Christine Lagarde, the current head of the IMF and Bernard Tapie, a controversial businessman/politician who has just had his house searched by police to see if he took advantage of a state donation of 400 million euros.

He was granted the money in 2008 in order to close the 1992 Adidas case. A time when Sarkozy was president and Lagarde minister of finance.

They are rumoured to have given Tapie more help than strictly necessary. That said, Libération also notes that a number of people who are currently part of Hollande's government also helped out.

Something Tapie knows a lot about is football clubs and apparently the French ones aren't doing so well. That's according to Aujourd'hui en France which has dedicated its front page to all the French clubs from League One who are looking for funding and have had to sell some of their best players.