A far-left activist has been arrested in connection with a sabotage attack on France’s high-speed rail network last Friday, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Monday.
It is the first publicly announced arrest since the sabotage attack, which occurred just hours before the Olympic Games opening ceremony was set to begin on Friday.
Earlier on Monday, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said France suspected members of far-left groups were behind the vandalism on the country’s high-speed rail network.
“We have identified the profiles of several people,” Darmanin told France 2 TV, adding that the vandalism showed signs of far-left groups.
In recent years, France has been targeted by Islamist militants, but security services are more concerned about far-left or anarchist militants, who generally oppose the state and capitalism.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s divisive overhaul of the pension plan for 2023 has helped attract people to left-wing groups, which have increasingly incorporated ecological issues into their ideologies, Nicolas Lerner, then the head of France’s domestic intelligence agency, told Le Monde newspaper last year.
“In recent years, far-left movements have become known for particularly violent clandestine actions, including arson campaigns, looting and destruction of property,” Lerner, who now leads the foreign spy agency DGSE, said in the interview.
In its 2023 report on terrorism trends, European police agency Europol said left-wing and anarchist groups typically attack “critical infrastructure, such as repeaters and antennas, government institutions and private companies”, and that their “most common modus operandi” is arson and improvised explosive devices.
Rail services in France were back on track by Monday morning after teams worked around the clock over the weekend to repair damage, Transport Minister Patrice Vergritte told RTL radio.
Vergiet said 800,000 people had faced travel disruptions and state-owned rail operator SNCF would pay a heavy price.
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