PARIS – French authorities are making wide use of discretionary anti-terror powers to keep hundreds of people they deem to be potential security threats away from the Paris Olympics.
Minorities — largely with backgrounds in former French colonies — are often among those forbidden from leaving their neighborhoods and required to report daily to police, their lawyers say.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin says the restrictions aim to prevent “very dangerous” people from attacking the Games.
Here are some of the key findings by the Associated Press:
Who is affected?
Darmanin says he applied the movement restrictions and daily police check-ins to more than 500 people this year as part of France’s security buildup for the Games. The use of the powers appears unprecedented in scope. In contrast, the restrictions were imposed on 205 people in the first 26 months after France’s parliament passed anti-terror legislation authorizing such powers in 2017.
AP spoke to six lawyers for about 20 people whose movements have been restricted. Those affected during the Games include Amine, an apprentice bank worker and student now forbidden from leaving his suburb south of Paris — except to report at 6:30 p.m. daily to police. The 21-year-old French national whose father was born in Morocco has no criminal record and has not been charged with any crime, he and his lawyer say.
Amine believes French intelligence services mistook him for someone else who posted decapitation images and threats against LGBTQ+ people on a video-sharing app. AP is not identifying Amine by his full name because he fears potential employers and schools may reject him if they learn police flagged him as a threat.
“I am not dangerous for France. I am not a terrorist. I am just a student who works to finance his studies,” Amine said.
Police have visited him twice in the last four months, seizing his phone and computer in one instance, which made boning up for his exams harder, he said.
“If my name was Brian, if I was blond and blue-eyed, the situation would have been different. Except that it is not the case. I am a North African Muslim, and I’ve been targeted in France,” Amine said.
What prompted the measures’ wide use?
Interior Ministry notes seen by AP say security services foiled several alleged terror plots ahead of the Games, with Olympic soccer matches, an LGBTQ+ night club and France’s Jewish community among suspected targets. The ministry’s notes say the Israel-Hamas war has heightened the terror risk in France.
The Olympic host city was hit by Al-Qaida and Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers who killed 147 people in attacks in 2015.
Darmanin says he applied the restrictions to people with “possible” extremist links who served jail time and others who weren’t sentenced but “represent a danger for us.”
“What would the French people say, what would the world say, if people who we can suspect might carry out actions, who are radicalized, are left perfectly free and then commit attacks?” he asked last week.
Are the measures challenged?
Yes. Some of the lawyers AP spoke to said they understand the measures’ use for Olympic security but others say they’re applied too broadly.
Paris attorney Margot Pugliese described the powers as “really the total failure of the rule of law” because they can only be contested in court after they have been applied.
Of the lawyers AP spoke to, about half of their clients have immigrant backgrounds, mostly with family roots in North Africa.
Darmanin says minorities aren’t being singled out. People suspected of left- or right-wing extremism are under surveillance, too, he said.
Paris attorney Antoine Ory represented three people who have been affected — two of them with no criminal records. One was born in Madagascar; the other two are French Algerian and French Moroccan dual nationals.
“It’s extremely abusive,” he said. “Two weeks before the Games, they come along and say, ‘You’re dangerous.‘”
A week before the July 26 Olympic opening ceremony, Ory successfully overturned the restrictions for his Madagascar-born client. A court ruled that the Interior Ministry failed to prove that the man is a terror risk and ordered the state to pay him 1,500 euros ($1,600).
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AP video journalists Ahmed Hatem, Alex Turnbull and Jeffrey Schaeffer and Special Projects and Operations manager Thomas Rowley contributed.
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