Chechen teen arrested over Paris Olympics attack plot at football match

PARIS – French security services have arrested a Chechen teenager suspected of plotting an “Islamist-inspired” attack on a football match during the Paris Olympic Games in July and August, the interior ministry said on May 31.

According to the ministry, the General Directorate for Internal Security “arrested a 18-year-old of Chechen origin in Saint-Etienne” in south-east France on May 22, calling it “the first foiled attack against the Olympic Games”.

France is on its highest alert level for attacks ahead of the July 26-Aug 11 Paris Olympics, when around 10 million visitors and 10,000 athletes are expected to be present.

The global sporting showpiece is set to take place mostly in the capital, but other towns and cities around France will also host some disciplines as well as individual games.

The arrested Chechen was suspected of “actively preparing an attack against the Geoffroy-Guichard Stadium (in Saint-Etienne) during the football games that will take place there”, the interior ministry said.

“He intended to attack spectators but also security forces and die as a martyr,” its statement added.

He was charged on May 26 with terrorist conspiracy and is in pre-trial detention, the national anti-terror prosecutor’s office said in a statement to AFP.

The suspected plot could set nerves jangling in France, where organisers have faced persistent questions about the risk of an attack that would seriously tarnish the world’s biggest sporting event.

An offshoot of terrorist group ISIS, believed to be behind

a vicious attack on a Moscow concert hall

in March, is known to have threatened attacks in France.

“We applaud the efficiency of the (law enforcement) services and their exceptional mobilisation to ensure the security of the Games,” the Paris organising committee said in a statement.

“Security is the No. 1 priority for Paris 2024.”

Six football games are set to take place in Saint-Etienne, an industrial town of roughly 200,000 people about an hour’s drive west of Lyon.

They begin on July 24 with Argentina taking on Morocco in the men’s competition, and include a game between the French women’s team and Canada on July 28.

Concerns about the Paris Games have focused mainly on the opening ceremony on July 26 that will take place over a 6km stretch of the River Seine, the first time a summer Olympics has begun outside the athletics stadium.

Policing such a vast area of the capital will be a huge challenge, with 45,000 officers set to be on duty and large swathes of the centre out of bounds for everyone except ticket holders and local residents.

France has been repeatedly targeted by Islamist attackers over the past decade, often by individuals inspired by Al-Qaeda or ISIS.

Three terror plots have been prevented since the start of the year and 50 since 2017, according to the interior ministry.

Lucas Webber, co-founder of the Militant Wire research network, told AFP that ISIS, including its Khorasan offshoot in Afghanistan and Pakistan (ISKP), had “launched a new propaganda campaign to threaten and incite direct attacks against sporting events in Europe”.

“ISKP has led these efforts and called upon followers to carry out violent acts against the Olympics in France and the Uefa European Championship in Germany,” he said.

In October 2023, a radicalised 20-year-old Chechen who had sworn allegiance to ISIS

killed a teacher

in the northern French town of Arras. And in October 2020, another teenage Chechen extremist, who had come to France as a refugee,

beheaded a teacher

in a suburb north-west of Paris, shocking the country.

The

traditional Olympic torch relay is under way

in France, with the flame on a 12,000km trip surrounded by a “security bubble” of 100 officers including anti-drone specialists and anti-terror police.

A total of 78 people were arrested for trying to disrupt the relay and 30 suspect drones were intercepted during the first three weeks, said the interior ministry.

The Olympics have been attacked in the past – most infamously in 1972 in Munich and in 1996 in Atlanta – with the thousands of athletes, huge crowds and live global television audience making it a prime target. AFP