Crowd movements, tear gas, police charges and Liverpool supporters who were unable to access the enclosure before the end of the first half. This Saturday evening, on the occasion of the Champions League final, the party was spoiled and France was singled out, after the clashes which broke out near the Stade de France. Driss Aït Youssef is a doctor in public law and a specialist in security issues. He looks back on that evening.
RFI: France has already successfully organized major events: Euro 2016, Football World Cup, Rugby World Cup. What stuck this Saturday at the Stade de France?
Driss Ait Youssef: You have several factors, several events that have blocked the start of this meeting. First, you obviously had bad signage at the exit of the RER. Liverpool supporters have been misdirected.
Then you have another problem that needs to be determined, which is why the gates on the Liverpool supporters’ side are blocked? Is it because it was individuals with counterfeit tickets who tried to cross and were turned away, and that created a bottleneck? That is to say that you pass your ticket, it does not pass and you iron the ticket and it does not pass. In the meantime, you have thousands of supporters coming in and that creates a bottleneck.
You had at one point the irritation on the part of the Liverpool supporters who, seeing the time passing, imperatively wanted to enter the stadium. And then, we had a few scuffles, in any case moments of tension between the police in charge of maintaining order and the Liverpool supporters.
Why did the forces of order, at that time, decide to use their means of dispersal, force, tear gas, charges when in front, there are just people who come to see a show for which, a priori, they paid a ticket?
It’s a real question. The usual policing doctrine is to keep supporters at bay. You had a number of individuals who were tempted to climb the perimeter wall to gain access to the Stade de France. I remember that we already had an attack on November 13, 2015 at the Stade de France. So, indeed, it was imperative to protect this enclosure.
The technique that has been deployed for the maintenance of order is the throwing of tear gas canisters to keep a distance. It is extremely complicated. I think we could have done it differently, especially through dialogue, because you had a lot of families, but also children. These crowd movements of thousands of supporters could have done a lot of damage.
That’s at some point, not an administrative investigation, but both UEFA, which is organizing this event, will have to be done, because I remind you that it was to take place in Saint Petersburg, but what counts -given the situation in Ukraine, he was repatriated to France.
We had, I believe, more than 70,000 Liverpool supporters arrived in Paris. At some point, UEFA and the organizers, in any case the police headquarters, will have to meet to see what went wrong, including with the Stade de France. Have the gantries, at some point, not worked because they are faulty? Is it because of those counterfeit bills? The fact remains that we have individuals who had a valid ticket who were unable to access the Stade de France, or in any case not before the end of the first half.
What is also curious is that this figure of 70,000 Liverpool spectators was not a surprise, it was anticipated. The authorities anticipated it from Tuesday, from Wednesday, we had this figure. Once again why is it really at the level of the Stade de France that it gets stuck?
When you say 70,000, in Paris, you actually had this fan zone in Vincennes which could contain 30,000 people, and then you also had places, bars, restaurants in Paris which broadcast this final. After you have this practice and France has already organized events of this magnitude. Normally, access to the Stade de France only those who have tickets. However, we had Liverpool supporters on Saturday who had either fake tickets or no tickets at all. We are not talking about ten or thirty supporters, we are talking about thousands of supporters. And that is something that is relatively new and extremely complicated to manage. Because you create de facto a bottleneck, you are effectively putting pressure on the security guards to gain access to this sports arena which can hold 80,000 people. And the difficulty is also to protect the supporters inside.
Are we not on the method of the prefect Didier Lallement with this slightly muscular side? Doesn’t the way the events happened on Saturday carry its mark a bit?
No. We can consider that sometimes it is a little rigid. In fact, it is a method that is very general and addressed to everyone, and that does not distinguish between the father of the family and his two children who have valid tickets and those who are around and who are individuals who are there to try to climb the fences to gain illegal access to the enclosure. The tear gas canister is for everyone and that’s what’s unfortunate. We need a little dialogue and it is, it seems to me, the reform in particular of the national plan on the maintenance of order which should allow better communication both with the demonstrators, here we are going to say the supporters, and the organizers so that we can send messages.
I know that the Twitter account of the police headquarters worked great. There have been messages that have been sent here and there. But, obviously not enough to manage this event with serenity. The difficulty is that when you have bottlenecks, you have a major risk beyond the action of the forces of order which today is rather maintaining a distance, you have these movements of crowd with many children, which can be extremely dangerous and difficult to manage.