What to take away from AP’s Olympic security story: Minorities, others flagged as terror risks

PARIS — French authorities are making extensive use of their discretionary counterterrorism powers to remove hundreds of people they consider potential security threats. the Paris Olympic Games.

Minorities — many from former French colonies — are often among those barred from leaving their neighborhoods and required to report daily to police, their lawyers say.

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the restrictions were aimed at preventing “very dangerous” people from attacking the Games.

Here are some of the keys conclusions of the Associated Press:

Darmanin said he has applied travel restrictions and daily police checks to more than 500 people this year as part of France’s security reinforcement for the Games. The use of these powers appears to be unprecedented in scale. In contrast, the restrictions were imposed on 205 people in the first 26 months after the French parliament passed an anti-terrorism law authorizing such powers in 2017.

The AP spoke to six lawyers representing about two dozen people whose movements have been restricted. Among those affected during the Games is Amine, a bank apprentice and student who is no longer allowed to leave his suburb south of Paris except to report to police at 6:30 p.m. each day. The 21-year-old French national, whose father was born in Morocco, has no criminal record and has not been charged with any crimes, he and his lawyer said.

Amine believes French intelligence services mistook him for someone else who posted images of beheadings and threats against LGBTQ+ people on a video-sharing app. AP is not identifying Amine by his full name because he fears potential employers and schools will reject him if they learn that police have flagged him as a threat.

“I am not dangerous for France. I am not a terrorist. I am just a student who works to finance his studies,” Amine said.

Police visited him twice in the past four months, seizing his phone and computer in one case, making his exam preparation more difficult, he said.

“If my name was Brian, if I was blond and blue-eyed, the situation would have been different. Except that’s not the case. I’m a North African Muslim and I was targeted in France,” Amine said.

Interior Ministry notes seen by AP indicate that security services foiled several suspected terror plots ahead of the Games, with Olympic soccer matches, an LGBTQ+ nightclub and France’s Jewish community among the suspected targets. the war between Israel and Hamas increased the terrorist risk in France.

The host city of the Olympic Games was hit by gunmen from al-Qaeda and the Islamic State and suicide bombers who killed 147 people in attacks in 2015.

Darmanin said he applied the restrictions to people with “possible” links to extremist groups, who have served prison sentences, and others who have not been convicted but “represent a danger to us.”

“What would the French say, what would the world say, if people who could be suspected of taking action, who are radicalised, were left in perfect freedom and then committed attacks?” he asked last week.

Yes. Some of the lawyers AP spoke to said they understand the value of these measures for Olympic security, but others say they are being applied too broadly.

Paris lawyer Margot Pugliese called the powers “a complete failure of the rule of law” because they can only be challenged in court after they have been applied.

Among the lawyers interviewed by AP, about half of their clients have immigrant backgrounds, most with family roots in North Africa.

According to Darmanin, minorities are not targeted. People suspected of left-wing or far-right extremism are also monitored.

Parisian lawyer Antoine Ory represented three people concerned, two of whom have no criminal record. One was born in Madagascar, the other two have dual Algerian and French-Moroccan nationality.

“It’s extremely abusive,” he said. “Two weeks before the Games, they come and say, ‘You’re dangerous.'”

A week before the Olympics opened on July 26, Ory successfully had the restrictions on his client, who is from Madagascar, overturned. A court found that the Interior Ministry had failed to prove that the man posed a terrorist risk and ordered the state to pay him 1,500 euros ($1,600).

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AP video journalists Ahmed Hatem, Alex Turnbull and Jeffrey Schaeffer and special projects and operations director Thomas Rowley contributed to this report.