French police arrest far-left activist in connection to rail network sabotage
Train service resumes after weekend repairs; official says ultra-left actors may have been ‘manipulated’ into committing attack hours before Olympics opening ceremony
French authorities arrested an ultra-left activist at a site of national rail company SNCF on Monday, a police source said, days after sabotage attacks paralyzed the network just before the Olympic opening ceremony.
The man was detained at Oissel in northern France on Sunday and had access keys to SNCF technical premises, tools and literature linked to the ultra-left, the source told AFP, asking not to be named.
At the same time, police said that the fiber optic networks of several telecommunications operators had been “sabotaged” in six areas of France, although Paris was not affected.
There was no immediate indication of whether that incident was connected to Friday’s attack on the rail network.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said earlier on Monday that France was leaning toward the likelihood that far-left extremists were behind the train network damage last Friday, which coincided with the Olympic Games opening ceremony.
Saboteurs had struck France’s high-speed train network with predawn attacks on signal substations and cables at critical points, causing travel chaos hours before the opening ceremony.
“We have identified the profiles of several people,” Darmanin told France 2 TV, regarding the hunt for those saboteurs. He added that the saboteurs’ mode of operation bore the hallmarks of far-left extremists, without providing examples.
Far-left French anarchists have a history of targeting the train network with arson attacks.
The attacks were “deliberate, very precise, extremely well-targeted,” Darmanin said, adding that this was “the traditional type of action of the ultra-left.”
Asked whether the profiles that were identified in connection to the attack were close to the far left, Darmanin said: “We must be cautious.”
He said the question was whether the actors were “manipulated” into carrying out the criminal act, or if they did it “for their own benefit.”
“These are people who may be close to this movement,” the interior minister added, without expanding further.
A statement signed by “an unexpected delegation” was sent to several news media outlets expressing support for the sabotage and criticizing the Olympic Games as being a “celebration of nationalism” and the oppression of peoples by nation-states.
Darmanin said the statement was “something that resembles a claim,” but cautioned that “we must be careful because it could be an opportunistic claim.”
It remained unclear if the sabotage was deliberately timed to disrupt the Games’ opening spectacle on Friday evening.
All trains were back up and running by Monday morning after teams worked around the clock over the weekend to fix the damage, Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete said on RTL radio.
The attacks affected 800,000 travelers, but “in the end, 700,000 were able to make their trips” while 100,000 were hit by train cancellations, he said.
Since the attacks, 50 drones, 250 rail security agents and 1,000 maintenance workers were deployed to tighten security along the 28,000-kilometer (17,400-mile) high-speed train network, the minister said, adding that the incident would likely cost millions of euros.
The Times of Israel Community.