Those responsible for the coordinated acts of sabotage that hit the French railway network on Friday, just before the Olympic Games' opening ceremony, are still unknown. Initial police investigations are looking at individuals connected with extreme left-wing groups. However, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has also raised the possibility of foreign involvement.
French police are investigating the possible involvement of extreme left groups in last week’s sabotage of the French rail system that paralysed high-speed TGV lines and disrupted travel for about 800,000 people in France.
The saboteurs carried out precisely targeted attacks in which fibre optic cables that ensure the transmission of safety information for train drivers were cut and set on fire at three key points along the TGV network.
Occurring just a few hours before the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, at the height of the holiday getaway season, the disruption caused chaos for French rail passengers until the morning of Monday, July 29.
The “sabotage was deliberate, very precise and extremely well-targeted”, said Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on France 2 TV, adding that the attack was a “traditional mode of action of the extreme left”.
A mysterious 'unexpected delegation'
The investigation by France's national jurisdiction for combating organised crime (JUNALCO) is already making progress.
On Sunday, a 28-year-old man was arrested at a site of the SNCF, France's national rail network, in Oissel, northern France. In his vehicle, investigators discovered “access keys to SNCF technical premises”, “wire cutters, a set of universal keys, as well as literature with links to the extreme left”. The man was taken into police custody in Rouen, but no immediate link to Friday's events was established.
An e-mail claiming responsibility for the TGV sabotage was sent to several media outlets on Friday, signed by a group unknown to French security services -- “une délégation inattendue” (“an unexpected delegation”). The text of the e-mail equates the development of the rail network with colonialism: “The railroad is not an insignificant infrastructure. It has always been a means for the colonisation of new territories, a prerequisite for their devastation and a ready-made path for the extension of capitalism and state control.”
The message also denounces the Olympic Games: “They call it a party? We see it as a celebration of nationalism, a gigantic mise-en-scène of the subjugation of populations by states”. The letter concludes by calling for “the downfall of a world based on exploitation and domination”.
Darmanin cautioned on Monday that the letter might be inauthentic: “We have to be careful because it could be an opportunistic claim.”
The extreme left theory
According to political scientist Sylvie Ollitrault, the vocabulary used in the e-mail may indicate the involvement of the far left. “It could be extreme left, anti-capitalist networks, people who are clearly against globalisation,” says Ollitrault research director and specialist in environmental movements at CNRS, the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
For some time now, sabotage has been part of the repertoire of the more radical environmental activists, including the Swedish academic Andreas Malm, who gained notoriety with his 2021 book “How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire”.
Malm argues that sabotage is a reasonable tactic when used by the movement against human-caused climate change.
Malm visited Paris in March 2023 to address an audience of the environmental collective Les Soulèvements de la Terre, (“The Earth Uprisings Collective”). This group, whose actions have included the occupation and sabotage of a Lafarge cement works near Marseille in 2022, were described as practising “ecoterrorism” by Darmanin.
Darmanin announced the administrative dissolution of the group in June 2023, a decision that was later annulled by the Conseil d’Etat, France’s highest appeals court for administrative law.
Read moreFrench court overturns government decree to disband 'Earth Uprising' climate group
But Ollitrault doubts that groups from the environmental movement would be involved in the sabotage of railway lines: “Up to now, acts of sabotage that have been claimed by environmental groups were mainly linked to development or construction that had negative environmental impacts. Trains, on the other hand, tend to be seen as a virtuous mode of travel, and are therefore favoured by environmentalists” because of their relatively low carbon footprint.
Suspicion of foreign manipulation
Speaking on France 2 TV, Darmanin raised the possibility of foreign involvement in the sabotage on Saturday: “Who’s responsible? Either it’s domestic, or it’s ordered from abroad, it’s too early to say.”
For several months now, French intelligence has been very alert to the threat of foreign interference, particularly from Russia. A few days ago, a 40-year-old Russian national was arrested and placed in custody on suspicion of wanting to “destabilise” the Paris Games.
Other European nationals have recently been arrested in France after carrying out various destabilisation operations. A Moldavan couple were held responsible for the blue Star of David graffiti that were spray-painted on dozens of buildings in and around Paris after the start of the Israel-Gaza war in October, 2023.
At the end of May, a Ukrainian, a German and a Bulgarian were arrested on suspicion of placing coffins, draped with French flags and bearing the message "French soldiers from Ukraine", beneath the Eiffel Tower. (French President Emmanuel Macron has displeased Moscow by several times refusing to rule out the possibility of sending Western ground troops to Ukraine.)
While Russia systematically denies being behind the “destabilising” operations, there is little doubt that there has been foreign interference.
The Bulgarian who was arrested admitted to having been paid €40 to transport the cargo of coffins and his accomplices to Paris.
“There’s a kind of outsourcing of subversive actions,” says David Colon, a professor and researcher at Sciences-Po in Paris.
Responding to a question about the recent acts of interference in France, a Kremlin spokesman denounced “misleading information” aimed at “making Russia responsible for everything that happens”.
It is clear that hosting the Olympic Games has made France a prime target for operations to undermine the country. Overnight from Sunday to Monday, the fibre optic cables of telecoms operators in several areas of France were cut. The Paris public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation.
This article is adapted from the original in French.
