“A failure” and numbers not “perfectly correct”. Paris police chief Didier Lallement made amends on Thursday, June 9, during his hearing before the Senate to explain the incidents at the Stade de France on May 28 during the Champions League final, attributed by authorities to Liverpool supporters without a valid ticket.
The prefect was not the only one interviewed by the senators of the law commission. Franceinfo takes stock of this day.
The prefect of police recognizes a “failure”
“It’s obviously a failure”conceded Didier Lallement, mentioning the people “pushed or assaulted” and “shaken image” from France. “It’s a wound for me”, he added. The hearing of the prefect comes after that, on June 1, of the Ministers of Sports Amélie Oudéa-Castéra and of the Interior Gérald Darmanin. The latter had maintained his much-criticized version, reaffirming that “35,000” supporters with counterfeit tickets or without tickets had come to the Stade de France and were allegedly “root evil” the cause of the incidents.
“I assume completely” this digit “which I gave to the minister”said Didier Lallement, while acknowledging having “maybe deceived”. “I never claimed he was perfectly fair”, he added, while maintaining that there were too many people compared to the capacity of the stadium (79,000 seats). In particular, he refuted having said that these supporters were all “in front of the stadium gates”while several videos and testimonies showed that there was not a large number of supporters around the Stade de France after the start of the match.
Regarding the use of tear gas on the supporters, it was “the only police means to push back a crowd except to charge it”which would have been a “serious error”insisted the prefect, who said to himself “sorry” for “people of good faith”. “Decisions Made” made it possible to preserve “the physical integrity of people and the holding of the match”nevertheless welcomed the prefect, recalling that the RER B strike had caused a massive postponement of supporters at the checkpoints at the exit of the RER D.
Video surveillance tapes were not retained.
The senators also interviewed Erwan Le Prévost, the director of institutional affairs for the French Football Federation (FFF). He pointed to the lack of information from the RATP. “If we had had real-time information on the diversion of RER B flows [en partie en grève] towards the RER D, we could have redesigned our system at the start of the afternoon. The prefecture did not have the information either.added Le Prévost.
The hearing of the FFF made it possible to learn that the video surveillance images of the violence around the stadium were not kept. “It’s the law”told AFP the chairman of the culture committee, Laurent Lafon. “We are surprised, the prefect took legal action very quickly, there was plenty of time to seize (these images), we have to understand what happened”.
The mayor of Liverpool denounces “the very heavy hand of the police”
Also auditioned, the mayor of the metropolis of Liverpool, Steve Rotheram, castigated “the lack of organization and the very heavy hand of the police, and of course the way the authorities are trying to shift the blame onto a scapegoat, the Liverpool supporters, for their incompetence”he told AFP, before repeating this thesis by videoconference in front of the senators.