Analysis
Who
launched attack on the French rail network – and why?
Daniel
Boffey
in Paris
Arsonists
used crude methods but disruption to opening of the Olympic Games in Paris was
severe
Sat 27 Jul
2024 00.28 CEST
It was about
1.15am when the SNCF maintenance workers, carrying out repairs by moonlight,
spotted the group of people a little further down the railway line near a
signal box outside the sleepy village of Vergigny, in the northern French
department of Yonne.
They were
concerned enough by the unlikely sight at such an hour to approach the
intruders, and then to make a call to the local police as those they had
interrupted ran off into the dark.
That
sighting, along with the remains of incendiary devices left behind at what are
now crime scenes across the French rail network, will form a crucial part of
the investigation into what was on Friday being described by one Socialist
senator as the “destabilisation, sabotage and the calling into question of the
image of France” in the hours before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games
in Paris.
The methods
used by the arsonists appeared crude – starting fires to destroy the fibre
optic cables at signal boxes along France’s high-speed rail lines – but the
damage has been no less severe for it, both to the transport infrastructure and
the country’s confidence in its security preparations before the next fortnight
of sport.
“It’s a huge
security job, it’s meticulous, it’s wire by wire that we have to repair all
these cables that have been damaged and burned,” said Jean-Pierre Farandou,
chief executive of the SNCF.
For all the
claims from senior French politicians, including Paris’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo,
that the attack had been irrelevant to Friday night’s soggy ceremony on the
Seine, the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, had been among those forced to
change his travel plans.
A Downing
Street spokesperson confirmed that he had intended to take the Eurostar but had
to fly. France’s SNCF railway operator said it would be urgently tightening
security around the rail infrastructure “in coordination with the forces of law
and order”.
It was an
undeniably shaky start to what had been billed as the largest peacetime
security operation on French territory, in which 45,000 police and gendarmes
had been deployed on the streets. The hunt is on to get quick justice. But who
was behind it?
Beyond
charred cables and the fleeting sight of some of the arsonists, a further line
of inquiry did emerge on Friday.
An
incendiary device had also been discovered on the Aix-Marseille TGV line on 8
May, it was revealed, when the Olympic flame was arriving in the region.
Thursday
night’s attacks had been intended to disable the TGV’s nerve centres outside
Paris: the signal boxes at Courtalain (Atlantic high-speed line), Croisilles
(LGV Nord) and Pagny-sur-Moselle (LGV Est).
Had the
device found in Aix-Marseille been a trial run? Or an earlier failed attempt to
disrupt France’s Olympic preparations?
Seeking to
piece together the jigsaw is Paris public prosecutor Laure Beccuau, who
announced that she would be taking charge of the investigation into “all the
wilful damage caused to SNCF sites”.
Gérald
Darmanin, France’s interior minister, said the security forces were “hoping to
swiftly make arrests”.
But there
were words of caution from the prime minister, Gabriel Attal, over speculation
about the identity of the perpetrators at a time, he suggested, when rumour and
fear might prove as destabilising as the crimes themselves.
“The
investigation is starting, I call on everyone to be cautious,” Attal said.
“What we know, what we see, is that this operation was prepared, coordinated,
that nerve centres were targeted, which shows a form of knowledge of the
network to know where to strike,” he said.
Attal added
he could not “say more about the perpetrators, the motivations”.
Israel’s
foreign minister, Israel Katz, did not heed Attal’s call, instead claiming on
social media that it had been the work of Iranian proxies, although he offered
no evidence.
“The
sabotage of railway infrastructure across France ahead of the Paris 2024
Olympics was planned and executed under the influence of Iran’s axis of evil
and radical Islam,” he wrote on X.
“As I warned
my French counterpart this week, based on information held by Israel, Iranians
are planning terrorist attacks against the Israeli delegation and all Olympic
participants.
“Increased
preventive measures must be taken to thwart their plot. The free world must
stop Iran now – before it’s too late.”
Another
theory is that it was a Moscow-inspired attempt at destabilisation.
On Sunday,
French police had arrested Kirill Griaznov, 40, a cordon bleu chef and reality
TV star who they suspect of being a member of the FSB, the Russian security
agency. He is being detained on charges of plotting a “large scale” operation
to destabilise France.
Security
services across Europe have long been on alert to Russian sabotage after
alleged Russian involvement in an arson attack in east London, an inferno that
destroyed the largest shopping mall in Poland, a sabotage attempt in Bavaria in
Germany and antisemitic graffiti in Paris.
France’s
former ambassador to Moscow, Jean de Gliniasty, was among those on Friday to
say he believed Moscow’s involvement was possible.
“We are
obviously in a situation of conflict with Russia, and Russia is obviously not
going to do anything, and that is an understatement, to help these Olympic
Games be a success,” he said.
A further
theory is that the crimes bore the hallmarks of the extreme anarchist left.
Eight people were prosecuted in 2018 of being part of an anarchist group that
attempted to sabotage part of France’s high-speed rail network a decade
earlier. They were, however, cleared of the crime.
As a “no
flight” restriction above the French capital was lifted, and the sharpshooters
put away their weapons, Parisiens were grateful to have their city back after a
ceremony that had forced many of them into conditions not unlike lockdown. But
the last 24 hours had shown just how vulnerable they remain.
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