Who is sabotaging the French railways

Last Friday, July 26, 2024, around four in the morning, the French railways (fr. SNCF) were suddenly forced to suspend traffic on three of the four main branches (directions) of high-speed lines - for superfast TGV trains, and after a series of extremely well-coordinated and precisely directed "malicious acts of vandalism" sabotage and intentional physical damage to the railway infrastructure. Illites, in simple words: in the towns of Courtalen, Croisier and Pangy sur Moselle, i.e. in the directions west-southwest (Brittany and Bordeaux), north (Lille, London, Brussels) and east (Strasbourg), as yet unknown perpetrators cut, and then they set fire to entire bundles of cables crucial for the safety of railway traffic, i.e. cables that ensure the functioning of automatic switches and signaling.

Near the fourth locality (Verginy) on the southern branch of the TGV (Marseilles), members of the security of the railway infrastructure surprised the perpetrators and forced them to flee. The perpetrators left behind numerous items, which will inevitably be dealt with by the investigators.

Although the mentioned toponyms elude even the more advanced connoisseurs of the French "interesting geography", the same cannot definitely be said for the perpetrators of the aforementioned sabotage. Namely, in the vicinity of these localities, there are neuralgic points of French high-speed railways, at key forks for further important regional routes. Let's remind: along the French railway network of almost 28000 kilometers, only about 140 such "very sensitive" points have been identified; also, SNCF annually spends about 10 million euros on maintenance and improvement of the network's physical-technical security system (advanced electronic and video-surveillance with increasingly frequent use of drones, but also additional advanced training of SNCF personnel for general security issues).

SYSTEM COLLAPSE

Already on Friday, the SNCF company announced that the traffic on the mentioned TGV routes will return to normal only after the weekend - which happened to the greatest extent on Monday morning, estimating that this sudden disruption in rail passenger transport - in one way or another - will be affected almost 800000 users of its services, who were offered a series of compensations due to the "inconvenience" they suffered.

From Friday to Monday, practically no one could take the TGV to or from Paris. Apart from the fact that a large number of travelers that day rushed to Paris for the opening of the Olympics - or with an "overpriced" ticket for one of the Olympic competitions held during the weekend - countless Parisians for the same reason tried to take the last train out of the "security overstretched" capital. Finally, last weekend was the first weekend of the big "change of guests" during the annual holidays (July/August), which is the biggest logistical and transport challenge for SNCF.

The words of Gabriel Atal, the outgoing Prime Minister at the head of the "crisis headquarters" of the Ministry of Transport, were primarily addressed to the many users of SNCF services who "failed their family weekend, the start of their summer vacation or the opening of the OI". The outgoing Minister of Transport, Patrice Vergriet, particularly pointed to the aforementioned exceptional synchronization and coordination of the "attack", and to the perpetrators' very good knowledge of the core of the attacked infrastructure, which points to the work of a "unified organization". He refrained from any speculation about who the perpetrators might be or what their motivations might be, while SNCF director general Jean-Pierre Farrand did not spare harsh words, declaring that this was nothing less than "an attack on all French citizens and on the entire France".

DIRECTIONS OF INVESTIGATION

The thought of a potential Islamic terrorist attack was immediately dismissed. Very precisely carried out sabotage of delicate installations, especially without human casualties, is certainly not common modus operandi those terrorist cells, for which human victims are the primary goal, and any spectacular destruction of infrastructure is just "collateral damage".

In this case, the same modus operandi first of all, it refers to the already known "signature" of ultra-leftist militant activists and groups (often on the other side of the law), although a certain number of "informed" beforehand he does not rule out the involvement of a "foreign" - read Russian - factor.

Even the sharp right-wing hawk of Macron's party, retired interior minister Gerald Darmanen, proverbially quick on the "ultra-left" qualifiers for any more turbulent activism (well, any activism), was relatively restrained this time. When asked about the suspicions of the ultra-left, he cautiously answered that "several 'interesting' profiles have been identified so far, but it is not yet entirely clear for the perpetrators of these sabotages whether they acted for their own account or someone else's".

FOREIGN - RUSKI - FACTOR

Apart from Macron's increasingly ardent support for Ukraine in the war against Russian aggression, Russian resentment towards France and the French in general, and Emmanuel Macron in particular, has been strengthened by the ban - for the same reason - on the participation of Russian Olympians in these Games (apart from fifteen of them, who will compete under a "neutral" Olympic flag).

However, recent events on the eastern edges of the EU could point to potential (even extremely indirect) Russian involvement. Namely, exactly three months ago, after a series of sabotages on the Czech railway network suspected of being behind Russian "services", the Czech Prime Minister officially warned all EU partners about potential Russian-directed sabotage, especially aimed at the railway transport network. Just three days later, he is in Germany in flagrante (dialectic of fingers and jam) caught a group of saboteurs on the railway who very quickly admitted that they worked for the Russians, but for purely selfish, financial reasons. However, similar cases have since been recorded in Sweden, a recent NATO member, and Poland, which provides the strongest support to neighboring Ukraine in the war against Russia.

Finally, in the context of the already mentioned security frenzy caused by the Paris Olympics, a Russian citizen (an unnamed forty-year-old former chef and Instagram influencer) was detained in Paris last Friday on suspicion of espionage and activities aimed at destabilizing the state, a criminal offense for which punishment is threatened imprisonment of 30 years.

The official Kremlin rejected these accusations in the strongest terms, calling them fantasizing, with the proverbial jumps of hardened media propagandists like "they will see what sabotage is when we shoot them a couple of hypersonic missiles".

photo: ap

ULTRA LEFT

The fact that this is not the first such case of sabotage on the railways, although it is completely unrecorded in terms of scope so far (see the box "Saboteurs and Sons") points to the fact that the investigators mostly privilege the "ultra-leftist" background, apart from the usual "signature".

This is supported by the fact that the investigation was entrusted to the Special Prosecutor's Office for organized crime (not terrorism) and the gendarmerie (which in France is responsible for police in rural areas, while the police is responsible for urban areas). Finally, a clear signal that the authorities are "fed up" with such incidents (apart from the already mentioned Olympic security tension) is the fact that the previously usual qualifications - "causing general danger", "organized intentional material destruction or damage" and similar types of vandalism - changed to "criminal association for the purpose of harming vital national interests", which is a crime in the rank of high treason. In translation, the transition from a maximum of 20 to a minimum of 30 years in prison.

To that should be added an email sent to several French and foreign media through the "Riseup" application, in which an unnamed "unexpected Olympic delegation" takes responsibility for the sabotage committed in protest against the OI, using the recognizable rhetoric of anarcho-leftist militants. In this connection, we also mention in extremis the prevented sabotage on the Marseille-Aix-en-Provence railway line in the context of the arrival of the "Olympic torch" in Marseille on May 8, as well as the "already seen" sabotage of the Internet fiber optic trunk lines, which slowed down not only the local (south of France), but also the European Internet (and especially the Free and SFR operators), near which protest graffiti against the Olympics was observed.

Finally, we should also mention that on Sunday, July 28, an unnamed railway worker, already known (to the authorities) for his ultra-left activism, was detained in one of the SNCF plants in Normandy, and in whose possession was found a set of "keyboards" (which allow entry into "sensitive" facilities). and professional tools, and literature on anarcho-leftist topics.

THE FINAL DEVELOPMENT

No matter how intensive it is, the launched investigation will certainly not be short-lived or simple, and the previous experience with similar acts of sabotage and vandalism (regardless of the political motivations) unfortunately does not bode well for a positive investigative-judicial outcome of these unpleasant events, which immediately cast a shadow on the bright beginning. Paris Olympics.

"Saboteurs and Sons"

Of the few media-recorded cases of sabotage on the French railway network in the last fifteen years, three that have left a mark on the public should certainly be mentioned.

The "Tarnak" Affair: After the sabotage of the contact network on the high-speed rail lines (LGV) in the region of the north and northeast of France on November 8, 2008, three days later a married couple, already known for their violent ultra-leftist activism - Julien Coupa and Jildun Levy, were detained together with several ultra-left militants, and under the charge of "criminal association for the purpose of terrorist activity", and other "malicious" threes. However, after several years, almost a decade long judicial "soap opera", first in 2017 the charge of "terrorism" was dismissed, and then the qualification of "criminal association" was also dismissed, and the first defendants, by the decision of the Paris Court of Cassation, in March 2018 acquitted of all charges (with symbolic probation and fines that the suspects "served" well in custody). The whole affair eventually blew up and turned into a true judicial fiasco.

For the sake of anecdote, let us also mention that the so-called Žilijen Kupa returned to the public spotlight in the context of the wave of violent protests by the "Yellow Vests" (2018/2019), on the occasion of which he was detained on December 8, 2018, after he "particularly stood out" by participating in " In the Fourth Act of the Yellow Vests", only a week after the Champs Elysees were sacked and the Arc de Triomphe was destroyed in the "Third Act".

"Bretigny-sir-Orge" Affair: Seven people died and over 400 were injured after a train derailed on a deliberately damaged track in the said place.

The "Ver sur Marne" affair: In January 2023, in the so-called town, a fire started in the main distribution cabinet of the local switching installation caused the destruction of over 600 cables and literally "derailed" Gare de l'Est, one of the four main lines, for two days. train stations in Paris.

Sabotage of transport, first of all the railway transport infrastructure, is the simplest, most accessible, most efficient and above all the "most favorite" way of ultra-leftist action, whatever the motivations for such acts of vandalism - the fight against capitalism, high-tech society, the Olympic Games, tax levies, aliens, etc. Some cynics say that sabotage of the railway network has become a "trademark", so to speak, of the narrow specialty of ultra-left activists and similar militant, mostly environmental extremists from the region around the city of Grenoble.

In addition, the vast majority of such and similar cases of sabotage, including the ones mentioned above, generally remain unsolved, that is, the perpetrators generally remain beyond the reach of judicial authorities.