Overflows at the Stade de France: the controversy rekindled by the removal of surveillance videos

Thursday, June 9, the Senate experienced a scene of agitation. Erwan Le Prevost, a representative of the French Football Federation, launched a new scandal concerning the incidents which marred the final of the Champions League on May 28. It concerns CCTV footage around the stadium. “Images are available for seven days. After seven days, they are automatically destroyed and the only way [de les récupérer]is that we should have had a requisition to provide them to the different populations”said Erwan Le Prevost. These requisitions did not take place. The authorities did not request video surveillance of the images which shocked the whole world.

To obtain camera images and keep them, a judicial police officer (OPJ) or a prosecutor must make the request via a judicial requisition, that is to say an official letter. This was done for the cameras around the stadium, which belong to the police. On the other hand, the investigators did not ask anything from the private company of the Stade de France, which manages 220 cameras. If nobody asks for these images, they are erased and that is what happened. Investigators also did not request the images from RATP, so they were purged. Only those of the SNCF have been kept.