Almost two weeks after the incidents that occurred on the sidelines of the Champions League final at the Stade de France (Saint-Denis), a first government investigation report was submitted to the Prime Minister on Friday June 10, and it is overwhelming. The document concludes with a chain of “failures” and deplores a police response to the incidents having caused “serious damage to the image of France”. The report highlights “highly publicized scenes of law and order operations…which have raised questions from outside observers about our country’s ability to deliver and succeed in the major sporting events including we will soon have the responsibility”.
This document comes to punctuate a week of twists and turns about the chaos that reigned around the Stade de France on Saturday, May 28. While the prefect of police Didier Lallement explained himself to the Senate on Thursday, the information that certain CCTV images have been erased has since been controversial. These are images of the Stade de France and not of the police.
The government report first addresses the issue of the security system around the enclosure, reinforced, but quickly exceeded. Nearly 1,680 security guards were mobilized by the French Football Federation (FFF) for the Real Madrid-Liverpool Champions League final, “i.e. 17% compared to the Coupe de France final”. On the police side, 6,800 police officers, gendarmes and firefighters were also deployed, including 1,300 at the Stade de France.
Near the stadium, the pre-screening points were “configured as usual, with 10 palpation lines and 41 agents able to correctly process a flow of 10,000 people”, from the RER D. But these were loaded of a “double filter”: inspect the supporters, their clothes, their bags, and control “the validity of the tickets either by chemical pens or by electronic cards”. A system already successfully tested for the final of the Coupe de France, “but with only electronic tickets and a low risk of counterfeit tickets”.
On May 28, he quickly proved ineffective against the massive influx of supporters. The strike movement on the RER B had indeed led to the transfer of a very large part of the travelers to the RER D, which created blockages “between the exits of the transport and the pre-filtering points”, in particular for lack of appropriate signage, notes Michel Cadot.
According to the DGIES, “the main trigger results from the massification of a crowd of spectators in the public space at the level of the pre-screening points, spectators of whom a significant proportion were without tickets or provided with counterfeit tickets” . However, the figure of 35,000 people without valid tickets around the stadium (advanced by the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin) is “to be put into perspective”, because it corresponds “to the deduction between the total volume of people who arrived by all means up to at the Stade de France and the number of spectators counted in the stadium”.
According to a first count, 2,589 unknown tickets were identified by the operator Orange. Three banknotes were specifically duplicated hundreds of times, “with good visual forgery quality, on a cardboard backing,” according to the document.
The blockages observed at the pre-screening were reproduced at the level of the entrance tripods, “preventing people in possession of valid tickets from being able to enter the stadium”, he describes. At 6:30 p.m., faced with a large influx from the RER D, the choice was made to open the roadblock, to avoid “crushing phenomena” and “a very serious human toll, which would have led to the cancellation of the match “.
The breach of the security perimeter then allows the intrusion of “criminals into the system” and then “the occupation of the southern part around the stadium by several thousand people without tickets or with counterfeit tickets”. Many thefts with violence are then noted by the police.
The invasion of the forecourt of the Stade de France then “required the use of hand gas canisters and tear gas canisters to restore order and oppose attempts to force their way in” by Liverpool supporters and “thugs” , justifies the report.
The police, responsible for investigating counterfeit tickets during the Champions League final, asked the Stade de France on Thursday evening for images of the violence filmed by its cameras, shortly after the announcement in the Senate that they had been destroyed, we learned Friday from a source familiar with the matter. Source who said he “still hopes” to get them back, without further details. Thursday evening’s information “according to which these images would not be kept for one month, the maximum authorized legal duration, but only a few days – information that we did not know – led us to request them all the same”, explained the Bobigny prosecution. .
For the delegate president of the LREM group at the Assembly Aurore Bergé, “we have enough elements which allow us to have an investigation”, in particular images “shot multiple times, and by journalists, and by supporters” . “The images, you have them, they exist, and we have a lot of testimonies and images” which should “allow all the same to enlighten” the investigators, she estimated on RMC. Asked whether she nevertheless regretted the disappearance of some of them, Aurore Bergé argued that it was up to the police and the justice system “that we will have to ask the question”.
Why did Gérald Darmanin then, from the days following the incidents, blame the English supporters? He then “acknowledged the different responsibilities” during his hearing before the Senate, the MP argued of the minister’s mea culpa.
