French police arrest ultra-left activist over pre-Olympics railway sabotage as new incident hits phone lines
Paris — French authorities have arrested an activist from an ultra-left-wing movement at a site belonging to national rail operator SNCF, days after sabotage attacks paralyzed the network at the start of the Olympic Games, a police source said Monday. The man was detained at Oissel in northern France on Sunday and had access keys to SNCF technical premises, tools and literature linked to the ultra-left, said the source, asking not to be named.
The man was placed in police custody for questioning in Rouen, the main city of France's Normandy region.
Meanwhile, in a new incident, fiberoptic networks of several telecommunications operators were "sabotaged" in six areas of France but Paris was not affected, police said Monday. CBS News' Elaine Cobbe said internet connections were affected, including some VOIP phone services, rather than cellular services.
The French public prosecutor announced later Monday that an investigation was opened into several attacks on telecommunications installations and that the probe would be be run jointly by counterterrorism investigators and the Gendarmerie national police force.
The communiqué from the prosecutor's office didn't say why counterterror authorities were involved, but Cobbe said it was possible the incidents involved a data breach, which could be enough to trigger their inclusion in the investigation as they often probe suspected cyberattacks.
Unknown individuals had early Friday attacked three different railway installations in different parts of France, causing days of chaos on the high-speed network as Paris hosts the 2024 Olympic Games.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told France 2 television that the authorities were looking into the theory that ultra-left wing movements were behind the attacks, which closely resembled an attack on railway infrastructure carried out last year by far-left activists.
French services have "identified a certain number of profiles that could have committed" the sabotage acts, he said.
He said the "attacks were intentional, very precise, extremely well targeted", adding that this was "the traditional mode of operation of the ultra-left."
"The question is whether they were manipulated or is it for their own account", he added.
By Monday morning all high speed trains in France were finally running normally again after railway engineers worked round the clock to repair the damage, said Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete.
The cost of the sabotage will "very probably" amount to millions of euros, including "commercial losses" and "repair costs", the minister told RTL.
Fibre optic cables running near the tracks and ensuring the transmission of safety information for drivers, such as signaling lights and points, were cut and set on fire in the attacks on three of the main high speed TGV lines, in the west, north and east of France.