An investigation unit formed around the many incidents that punctuated the C1 final between Liverpool and Real Madrid worked daily for four months to flush out the troublemakers.
After the international fracas of the fiasco, the investigation from the shadows. A special investigation unit of police officers from Seine-Saint-Denis has tracked down the perpetrators of the myriad thefts and assaults that have sown chaos around the Stade de France, on the sidelines of the 2022 Champions League final between Real Madrid and Liverpool.
The 81 arrests in the act during this evening only resulted in six convictions in immediate appearance during the following days at the Bobigny court. A drop of water in view of the more than 250 complaints collected by the courts around this match. “It is always extremely difficult when you have a mass movement, a crowd, to move from the management of public order to the judiciary.“, notes the prosecutor of Bobigny Eric Mathais, “it is necessary to say precisely who did what“.
Large resources and a thousand hours of video surveillance
A special cell was set up at the territorial security service of Seine-Saint-Denis, following the opening of the investigation two weeks after the facts. Twelve investigators dedicated themselves for four months, full time, to dissecting the events that took place around the Dionysian enclosure. A luxury of means normally reserved for the most sensitive procedures.
Immersing themselves in the thousands of hours of video surveillance of the area recorded that fateful evening – which lack the cameras of the Stade de France, automatically erased for lack of requisition in time – the police were able to build three legal files. Shot by shot, they dissect the videos, map, establish timelines. “In this flood of information, it was necessary to be able to individualize actions, identify the perpetrators of the offenses and then find the domicile of these individuals in order to arrest them.“, explains to AFP Lionel Lamy-Seisi, head of territorial security.
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Two homeless people, found thanks to their telephone, received 18 months in prison, part of which was suspended for attacking a family of Spanish supporters.
The second part concerns violence against a squadron of mobile gendarmes on the forecourt of the stadium after the kick-off of the meeting, postponed for 35 minutes because of the ambient disorder. “It’s painstaking work, we have a lot of individuals facing the police. We worked on them individually, tracing their route, trying to see where we could see their faces and we succeeded for two of them [condamnés à 15 mois de prison ferme pour l’un et 12 mois avec sursis pour l’autre]“, says Captain Nora Meraghni who led the cell, whose activity stopped at the end of October.
An attempted homicide revealed by the investigation
By exploring the SNCF tapes, an investigator also discovered an attempted murder against an English supporter on the RER D platform, which was not the subject of any report. The police made contact via social networks with the victim, who was sentenced to 90 days of ITT (total incapacity for work), for her to file a complaint.
“The victim didn’t believe it, she was afraid it was a scam!”
Nora Meraghni, captain in charge of the investigation cellat AFP
At the same time, they trace on the videos the progress of two attackers throughout the evening, until they end up at the building from which they left. Arrested in turn in mid-October, two suspects are indicted and placed in pre-trial detention. The investigation is continuing under the aegis of an investigating judge.
With six arrests for a titanic job, “we had numerically modest results compared to the investment“, concedes to AFP the prosecutor Eric Mathais, but to answer a”phenomenon of exceptional magnitude, an exceptional device was needed“.