France's Olympic security crackdown impacts Maghreb

The opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics was overshadowed by coordinated attacks against France’s high speed rail network feeding into the capital. Hundreds of thousands of journeys were cancelled or severely disrupted. The attacks – caused by gangs targeting vulnerable cabling systems that run next to the railway tracks - were swiftly described as being one of the biggest and boldest attacks of their type. However, it still remains unclear who was responsible. Thus far there have been no arrests. The French authorities suspect domestically based, far Left groups but have not ruled out ‘foreign involvement. It has also been recently reported that police investigating the sabotage acts have asked the U.S. FBI for help.

Meanwhile the authorities are making fairly comprehensive use of ‘discretionary powers’ to keep hundreds of people they regard as ‘security threats’ away from the Olympics altogether. Controversially many of these are from minority groups and from former French colonies such as Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, some of whom are angry that they have been wrongly singled out or, as they claim, mis-identified. Their lawyers have told The Independent newspaper in the UK that they are alarmed by the use of ‘a terribly dangerous tool’. In the run up to the opening of the Games, 500 people, who French Interior Minister, Gerald Darmanin said were ‘very dangerous’ people, were being ‘prevented from attacking the Games’. Many of these same people are being stopped from leaving their neighbourhoods and have to report into the police on a daily basis. 

While Government Ministers and the police will argue that it is better to be safe than to be sorry and that the attack on the high-speed rail network vindicates the tough response, as with similar broad sweeping counter-reactions, the cases of the innocent being caught up in such sweeps not only gains publicity but helps build resentment.

According to The Independent, ‘some of those now restricted in their movements, with orders that don't require prior approval from judges, include a man who had mental health issues in the past but is now receiving treatment. There also is an apprentice bank worker and business student who believes he's been targeted in part because he's Muslim and his father was born in Morocco, plus a halal food delivery driver who risks losing his job because he is banned from straying far from home during the 2024 Olympics and ensuing Paralympics’.  Paris attorney, Margot Pugliese said; ‘It’s really directly connected to the Olympic Games’. She described the powers as ‘a horror’ and ‘really the total failure of the rule of law’ because they can only be contested in court after they have been applied. ‘It is a terribly dangerous tool whenever there is a repressive government,’Pugliese said. 

And when similar powers are used by other countries, as one might expect countries such as France will likely be amongst the first to criticise the Governments that use them. How many of those falsely restrained, their names now often made public, can afford any legal redress after the event? How many of the 500 or so to whom these orders were attached are of North African extraction or are Muslim? Unsurprisingly one of those caught in the crosshairs of this security sweep is asking the question; ‘If my name was Gerard, and I had blue eyes and blond hair, would I have had a banning order applied to me?’ 

*Mark Seddon is a former Speechwriter to UN Secretary-General Ban ki moon & former Adviser to the Office of the President of the UN General Assembly