Paris police boss Didier Lallement has acknowledged a “failure” of his force’s behaviour around the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid, and has apologised for the use of teargas on supporters.
“It is obviously a failure. It was a failure because people were pushed around and attacked. It was a failure because the image of the country was undermined,” he said in a French Senate session on Thursday.
Lallement apologised for authorising the use of teargas, but added that he knew of “no other option” under the circumstances.
“I am well aware that people of good faith were gassed, and I am totally sorry for that, but I repeat: there was no other way,” he said.
Previously, the chief claimed that up to 40,000 fans tried to gain access to the Stade de France for the final using fake tickets or no tickets at all.
This has been widely disputed by media and supporters who were in attendance, and Lallement offered no evidence to support his claim here, instead suggesting his estimates came from insights from those on the ground.
“The figure has no scientific virtue, but it came from feedback from police and public transport officials,” he added. “Maybe I was wrong, but it was constructed from all the information harvested.
“What matters is that there were people, in large numbers, likely to disrupt the proper organisation of the filtering. But that we count them precisely to within 5,000, it doesn’t change much.”
“From an operational standpoint, it doesn’t change anything if it was around 40,000 or 30,000 or 20,000.”
French senators pushed Lallement to explain the empirical evidence behind the figure for fake tickets, which he said had come through reports from police officials.
“It was I who gave this figure to the minister, and I fully stand by it,” he added. “We made sure that the game was held and, most importantly, that there were no serious injuries and no deaths.”
During the parliamentary hearing, Lallement said he was the only one responsible for police action during the crowd trouble around the Stade de France, which is located just outside Paris.
According to Pierre Rondeau, reporting on Lallement’s statements, the police chief claimed that using teargas was the necessary and only possible way to disperse the crowd and prevent the stadium being rushed without resorting to charging the supporters.
This does not, however, appear to explain why many individual and isolated supporters were photographed and shown on video being sprayed by police where no danger of crowding or breaking into the stadium was apparent.
Liverpool’s metro mayor Steve Rotheram, who attended the final, during which he said he was robbed, was due to give testimony to senators later on Thursday.
Fans have been offered the chance to file criminal complaints after large numbers reported being attacked after the match, while Liverpool club officials are now set to meet the chair of Uefa’s review of problems before and after the final to ensure the inquiry is fully independent, amid suggestions that Dr Tiago Brandão Rodrigues – appointed to oversee the investigation – has links to Uefa president Aleksandar Ceferin.
Additional reporting by Reuters
