The arrest of an “ultra-left activist” followed the disruption of hundreds of thousands of travelers in France as a government official was reportedly targeted with a suspicious “black powder.”
(Video Credit: Sky News)
As athletes, spectators, and tourists alike converged on Paris, France for the Olympics, a massive disruption on the state-owned national railway, Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français (SNCF), left thousands stranded at railways stations ahead of a weekend of disruptions impacting nearly a million travelers.
Monday, a report from Le Figaro cited French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin in detailing that an “ultra-left activist” had been arrested for breaking into a railway site in Rouen as he “insisted that these sabotages were voluntary, very precise, extremely well targeted, and stressed that it was ‘the traditional mode of action of the ultra-left.'”
“The question is whether they were manipulated or is it for their own benefit,” the official added to France 2. “What has really interested and worried us is that these are extremely specific locations used for communication.”
“Clearly,” said Darmanin, “it was extremely well-targeted, it was not done randomly.”
As previously covered, ahead of the opening ceremony a “coordinated” arson attack resulted when unidentified saboteurs cut signal cables and burned them.
“The places were chosen specifically to have the heaviest impact. This is a sad day,” SNCF president Jean-Pierre Farandou was cited as saying by the Wall Street Journal.
‘Coordinated’ arson attack throws wrench in opening of Paris Olympic Games https://t.co/ES5t3FrsoF
— BPR (@BIZPACReview) July 26, 2024
While the identity of the “ultra-left activist” was not disclosed, the suspect was reported to have “several spray paint cans,” “wire cutters” a “set of universal keys” and “keys for access to technical rooms of the SNCF.”
Adding to the tense situation in the Olympic Games host country, France 3 reported that a suspicious letter had been addressed to Darmanin and the Roubaix town hall in which officers had discovered a “black powder” and racial slurs.
The mail was marked as suspicious at a sorting facility in the Côte-d’Or region of Longiv and a preliminary test suggested that the substance contained a “slight positivity for the plague.”
France 3 reported, “The substance was transmitted to the Institut Pasteur, which is conducting new analyses to confirm or not these results. Results that the prefecture of the Côte-d’Or has wanted to temper this Saturday afternoon: ‘It could be a false positive,’ she specified.”
Meanwhile, as damage to French infrastructure extended beyond railways to telecommunications, Secretary of State for Digital Affairs Marina Ferrari released a statement on the impact and efforts to resolve problems, “Under my supervision, the Center for Defense Electronic Communications cooperates with operators until communications and services are fully restored.”
“I condemn in the strongest terms these cowardly and irresponsible acts. Thank you to the teams mobilized this morning to carry out repairs and restore damaged sites to service,” she added.
Des dégradations commises dans plusieurs départements cette nuit ont affecté nos opérateurs de télécommunications.
Elles ont des conséquences, localisées, sur l’accès à la fibre, la téléphonie fixe et la téléphonie mobile.
Sous ma supervision, le centre pour les communications…
— Marina Ferrari (@Marina_Ferrari) July 29, 2024
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Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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