Far-left activist arrested in France after sabotage on railroad before Olympics
Kyiv • UNN
French police have detained a far-left activist suspected of sabotaging the rail network ahead of the Olympics. The incidents caused chaos on high-speed lines and caused millions of euros in damage.
French authorities have arrested an activist belonging to a far-left movement at a facility owned by national railroad operator SNCF, days after sabotage that paralyzed the network at the start of the Olympic Games, AFP reported Monday, UNN reported, citing a police source.
Details
The man was detained in Wassel in northern France on Sunday and had access keys to SNCF technical facilities, tools and literature related to the far left, the source said.
He was taken into custody for questioning in Rouen, the main city of the French region of Normandy.
Meanwhile, in a new incident, the fiber optic networks of several telecom operators were "sabotaged" in six districts of France, but Paris was not affected, police said.
Unidentified individuals attacked three different rail facilities in different parts of France on Friday morning, causing days of chaos on the high-speed network as Paris hosts the 2024 Olympic Games.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told France 2 that the authorities are looking into the possibility that far-left movements are behind the attacks.
French services "have identified a certain number of profiles that could have carried out" acts of sabotage, he said.
He said that "the attacks were deliberate, very precise, extremely well-targeted," adding that this was "the traditional way of working of the far left.
"The question is whether they were manipulated or whether they did it themselves," he added.
By Monday morning, all high-speed trains in France were finally running normally again after railroad engineers worked around the clock to repair the damage, said Patrice Verguet, the country's transport minister.
The cost of the sabotage is "likely" to be in the millions of euros, including "commercial losses" and "repair costs," the minister told RTL.
The attacks on the three main high-speed TGV lines in western, northern and eastern France cut and set fire to fiber optic cables laid alongside the tracks that transmit safety information to drivers, such as warning lights and arrows.
