A few hours before the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games, a major security perimeter is in place around the Seine. In total, more than 45,000 police officers and gendarmes, and 18,000 soldiers are deployed in the capital to secure the event. The airspace will be completely closed within a 150 km radius around Paris. An unprecedented measure, which has given rise to several false information on social networks.
Have battle tanks been deployed on the streets of Paris to secure the Olympic Games ? This is what several Internet users have been wrongly claiming on social networks in recent days. Their false information is based on a video viewed more than a million times, on X (ex-Twitter) alone. It shows several armored military vehicles, parading one after the other, in the middle of the city, on a paved road.
Please note, this video has nothing to do with the Olympics.
The accounts sharing these images assure that the scene takes place in Paris and that it shows the security measures put in place to secure the Games. Paris is at war “, ” It feels like Chile in 1973 after the coup d’état ! “, or ” There is a war or the #JO2024 ? “, comment Internet users.
A military parade in Marseille
In reality, this video was not filmed in Paris. The accent of the man filming and the architecture of the buildings visible in the background indicate that the scene takes place in Marseille. Using online mapping services, such as Google Maps, we know that the scene takes place on the Vieux-Port, at the Quai des Belges.
Furthermore, these images have nothing to do with the security arrangements for the Olympic Games since they were filmed during the national holiday parade on July 14 in Marseille. Among the military vehicles visible are: two Jaguar reconnaissance vehicles, two VABs, armored forward vehicles and a Caterpillar D6K bulldozer.
By consulting the images of the event published by the various units of the army, we even know that these vehicles belong to the 1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment, based in Carpiagne in the south of France.
These military vehicles will not be deployed to secure the Games. They are intended for combat missions in war zones and not for law enforcement missions. The Jaguars and the armored front vehicles, visible in the video, have never been deployed as part of Sentinelle, the anti-terrorist operation conducted on French soil since 2015.
Olympic Games targeted by disinformation
Behind this fake news, we find an entire ecosystem of X and Telegram accounts already widely identified as vectors of disinformation. After the covid-19 pandemic, the invasion of theUkraineand the war between Israel and Hamas, their stock-in-trade, now consists of criticizing the organization of the Olympic Games.
Some of these accounts shared the video of the break-in of the car of the Australian athlete, Logan Martin, to denounce the insecurity in Paris. In reality, however, the incident took place in Brussels, Belgium. A fake news story viewed more than 8 million times, taken up a few hours later by far-right accounts and by Russian-speaking Telegram channels, always with the aim of attacking the image of France and the Paris Games.
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