The false bomb threats have followed one another since then, and are visibly similar. In the space of ten days, they affected nearly 18 airports in France, the Palace of Versailles a dozen times or even the Montparnasse station in Paris. However, according to Clément Beaune, the Minister of Transport interviewed by “Questions Politiques” (France inter, France TV, Le Monde) this Sunday, October 22, these false alerts are sent from “almost always the same email address located in Switzerland”.
“There have unfortunately been nearly 70 alerts of this type which have concerned our airports since Wednesday, fortunately much less yesterday Saturday, the first day of departure on vacation for many French people,” he added. “Since Wednesday, it is almost always the same email address that is used, located outside the European Union, in Switzerland,” he clarified, suggesting that this put the authors of this “typical email which looks the same from one day to the next” beyond the reach of certain sanctions in the EU. He invited hosting sites to help the French authorities: “Everyone has a responsibility, including the platforms and social networks, to not support this type of attack and to cooperate as quickly as possible with civil aviation. French and our justice.”
“Not little jokers” but “big delinquents”
A suspect was arrested on Friday for the only alert issued by telephone concerning the Palace of Versailles, the others having been posted on a government website, according to police sources. The alerts at airports are the work not of “little jokers”, but of “big idiots or even serious delinquents”, underlined the minister. Regarding their motivation, “there can be a mixture between people who make bad jokes, who want to scare people for real, and sometimes also a kind of competition in stupidity between hackers”, he suggested.
Making false alarms is “extremely dangerous” because it mobilizes the security forces “for several hours”, recalled the minister. He indicated that he had asked each airport, for each alert received by email or call, to systematically file a complaint. In total, “more than 60 investigations, all locations combined, have been launched,” he said.
France has raised to the maximum level the alert level of the Vigipirate plan against attacks since the assassination on October 13 of teacher Dominique Bernard in his high school in Arras (Pas-de-Calais) by a young person accused of Islamist radicalization. . Police and military patrols from Operation Sentinel have been reinforced, as have the number of agents in train stations and airports. From next week, “40% more patrols will be put in place” in Paris airports, announced Clément Beaune.