“This is the traditional mode of action of the far left,” said Gérald Darmanin, invited this Monday morning on the set of France 2. The Minister of the Interior assures that the authorities have identified “a certain number of profiles who could have committed” the malicious acts impacting more than 800,000 travelers. During the night of July 25 to 26, four sites of the French National Railway Company (SNCF), exclusively on the high-speed line network, were targeted by acts of sabotage. Fiber optic cabling – transmitting in particular security information such as traffic lights – was damaged following deliberate fires.
“This operation was prepared, coordinated, and targeted nerve centers, which shows a form of knowledge of the network to know where to strike,” deplores the Prime Minister, raising the possibility that internal sources facilitated the sabotage operations. The Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, called for remaining “prudent,” not wanting to make hasty conclusions. At one time, the possibility of destabilization from abroad was considered.
However, several clues point to the ultra-left movement. The first, the modus operandi“The incendiary devices used carried bottles of gasoline,” notes The Parisiana practice found among far-left activists. Gérald Darmanin insists that “the sabotage was voluntary, very precise [et] “extremely well targeted”. Added to this was the arrest on July 28 in Seine-Maritime of an individual who had in his car, according to theAFP“access keys to SNCF technical premises, cutting pliers, a set of universal keys in particular, as well as literature relating to the far left”.
An attack claimed
Another element added credence to the theory of an ultra-left operation: an email of demands sent to French and international media. In their email, the saboteurs call “with all their heart” for “the fall of a world based on exploitation and domination” and whose Olympic Games would be “a celebration of nationalism, a gigantic staging of the subjugation of populations by States”.
The address: [email protected], is distinguished by its domain name RiseUpwhich translates from English to: to rise up. This secure domain name is “regularly seen in surveys in France on the violent protest movement of radical ecologists and insurrectional anarchists”, according to The Parisian. They define themselves as “a communication tool for individuals and groups who advocate for liberating social change.”
Three days after the action against the SNCF, other optical cabling networks were targeted by malicious acts. This time the targets were telecommunications operators – Free and SFR – throughout the territory. For the moment, no link has been made with the acts of vandalism against the railway network.