securing the Games “is a challenge but we will meet it”, says the Paris police prefect

Less than five months before the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Games, Laurent Nuñez wants to be reassuring about the security of the event. It will mobilize up to “45,000 law enforcement agents on certain days”.

“It’s a challenge but we will take it on”affirms the Paris police prefect Laurent Nuñez, interviewed Wednesday March 6 on franceinfo on the security system for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. The security of the Games is an event which will mobilize up to “45 000 law enforcement officers on certain days, 30-35 000 on average over the entire period”It is “unpublished”, according to the prefect. But “we know how to do it in France”he assures, recalling in particular the emergency organization of “the tribute to the Charlie Hebdo and HyperCasher attacks”Euro 2016 and the Rugby World Cup.

Furthermore, the number of spectators who will be able to attend the river parade of the opening ceremony has been set at 326,000 people, including 222,000 with free tickets, for reasons “technical and safety”he specifies, “we work in accordance with public and crowd safety rules and we do not exceed three people per square meter”. For him this is more or less the number “final” but who can still “go down a few thousand”.

Several “threats” identified

Hearing in the Senate on Tuesday, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, gave details of the security arrangements planned for the opening ceremony of the Games on July 26. Laurent Nuñez claims that he “the means, under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior, to secure the Olympic Games”. He wants to be reassuring, “we have no known Islamist threat”he said, while remaining very cautious, particularly in the face of “to the endogenous threat of individuals present on the territory, who could take action, and to the inspired threat which comes from outside, such as the Islamic State, Afghanistan, Syria…”. However, the Islamist threat is not the only one identified, “there are threats from the ultra-left, the ultra-right” And “there is the threat of radicalized environmentalists, who are already announcing that they will commit a number of actions of civil disobedience”he continues.

Another subject of concern is that of “Russian threat”, while several destabilizing actions have been carried out in recent months by Russia: around the Israel-Hamas war, with the drawing of blue Stars of David in Paris or even the amplification on social networks of the psychosis around bed bugs, one year before the Olympics. Russia is “a permanent threat” for the prefect. “Cyberattacks will be a strong threat, but we can trust the National Agency for Information Systems Security (ANSSI)”he maintains.

As for the risk of negligence or theft of documents on the security of the Olympic Games, the fear of which was rekindled by the theft of a computer from Paris town hall revealed last week, here too, Laurent Nuñez wants to be reassuring. The stolen documents are “traffic plans, which do not jeopardize the security of the Olympics”. The real plans for securing the Olympics “it is the police who detain them”they “are very secure” And “no one walks around with it”.