In Saint-Orens de Gameville, on the outskirts of Toulouse, a relay antenna was set on fire. More than 2,000 subscribers find themselves without means of communication. An attack claimed by an anti-Olympic far-left group.
On the night of Friday 25 to Saturday 26 July, a telephone relay antenna was set on fire in Saint-Orens de Gameville, near Toulouse in Haute-Garonne. A “NO JO” tag was found near the scene. The public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation and is not closing the door to an anti-Olympic Games far-left claim.
Especially after the strange message broadcast by the ultra-left Toulouse group “Des mauvais joueurs”: “At the stadium as in life, let’s take the turn of resistance”, we can read in a press release relayed by this local group. For the moment, it is impossible to know if the tag was made before or after the fire. The group claims that there is no “Olympic truce”, invoking in particular the displacement of the most marginalized populations” out of Paris to host the global event.
“Their claims are sometimes fallacious”
In Saint-Orens de Gameville, on the outskirts of Toulouse, “it would seem that a Toulouse far-left group relayed a claim from a national group, without there being any certainty (…) since their claims are sometimes fallacious: they attribute to themselves actions that are not theirs” indicates the prosecution.
The problem is that this town of 11,000 inhabitants now finds itself in a real mess, with many users no longer having any means of communication. Internet, landline, payment terminals for merchants… The malicious act caused serious damage. “We shared the connection from our phone, my 4G” explains a butcher from the town to BFMTV to allow some residents who pay by credit card not to be disadvantaged.
2,000 people affected on the outskirts of Toulouse
“When we discuss, in a democracy, we do it openly, we do not attack a population, we do not target it. Here it is the entire population that supports the defense of ideas that we can sometimes understand, but hardly admit,” regrets Serge Jop, mayor of Saint-Orens de Gameville. In total, more than 2,000 landline subscribers were left without services after the fire, the cabling of three operators having been impacted, the Haute-Garonne firefighters told AFP.
At the national level, a claim email sent to several media outlets
In the wake of this, an anonymous email claiming responsibility for the attack on the SNCF TGV network in the name of a desire to sabotage the Olympic Games was sent to several media outlets on Saturday, July 27. The rhetoric of the text is reminiscent of that of the far-left movement. Investigators are studying this lead but question the authenticity of this claim.
Jacques Morel, general of the gendarmerie, wonders about “an unexpected delegation”: “It could also look like a farce by people who want to take credit for something they didn’t do but who are taking advantage of the situation,” he judges on BFMTV. “Either it is indeed an organization that wants to claim its act now to put itself in the spotlight, or it is the subject of manipulation by people who are taking advantage of an unfortunate event to be able to sow disruption during this period of the Olympic Games.”