PARIS − For the second time in days, French security officials Monday were probing acts of coordinated sabotage apparently aimed at paralyzing critical infrastructure while Paris hosts the Olympic Games.
Police said fiber optic cables used by several major telecoms providers were found cut in several areas of France. France’s public prosecutor said counterterrorism police had joined the investigation. Traditional telephone and cell phone data services were impacted in the incident, police said, though it did not directly affect the Paris region.
Marina Ferrari, France’s cabinet-level minister for digital affairs, called it a “cowardly and irresponsible act.”
It comes as authorities revealed they were investigating the possible involvement of ultra-left wing groups in a separate incident, hours before the Olympics opening ceremony got underway Friday, that saw three different railway installations, also outside Paris, attacked. It caused widespread delays to France’s high-speed train network.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told French media Monday that authorities had “identified a certain number of profiles” among left-wing activists who could be responsible. A 28-year-old suspect was arrested Sunday and is being questioned in Rouen, a city, in the northern Normandy region. No other details have been released.
It was not clear if investigators believe the two incidents − Friday’s train-related attack and the cut fiber cables, which happened Sunday night − are linked. Darmanin told France 2 television the attack on the railway installations closely resembled an assault on railway infrastructure carried out last year in France by ultra-left wing movements.
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Paris police chief Laurent Nuñez briefly addressed security concerns Monday in a huddle with reporters outside a stadium in south Paris where Olympic table tennis, volleyball, handball and weightlifting events were taking place.
However, he did not offer any new insights on either investigation. In response to a USA TODAY question, a media representative for Nuñez subsequently said in a WhatsApp message that Paris’ top police official did not have anything to say about the sabotaged cables because it took place outside his official jurisdiction.
France is on its highest threat-alert level as the Games enters its first full week. The city has been effectively transformed into a landscape of metal-fence security barriers. QR codes tightly restrict who can go where.
Up to 45,000 uniformed police as well as 10,000 soldiers have created a vast security cauldron. Security officials and experts say there may be as many, if not more, plainclothes officers secretly guarding Paris’ streets.
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There are also sophisticated artificial-intelligence-assisted cameras are mounted on all the Olympic venues. They are able to scan for irregularities in crowd movements, fires and other hazards.
In the run-up to the Games, Nuñez said he was concerned about the threat of terrorism, especially Islamic terrorism, but also “low-intensity threats” from radicalized environmentalists, left-wing extremists and the pro-Palestinian movement, as well as Russia-linked actors who could seek to cause fear or confusion.
According to a joint investigation by France’s Le Monde newspaper and Germany’s Der Spiegel, a weekly magazine, one such Russian was a 40-year-old, Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef named Kirill Griaznov.
Griaznov lived legally in France for over a decade until he was arrested on July 19 with incriminating “diplomatic material, according to those outlets, citing French investigators as well as Griaznov’s own emails.
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Before he turned to high-end cooking, Griaznov was a bespectacled lawyer. French prosecutors, according to Le Monde and Der Spiegel, allege he also worked on behalf of the FSB, Russia’s domestic security service.
He was arrested and charged over allegations he aimed, at the direction of the Kremlin’s intelligence services, to stage “large-scale” acts of “destabilization” at the Games’ opening ceremony Friday. France’s authorities have not said what those “destabilization” acts might be, specifically. Only that they may have had “serious consequences.”
In recent months, according to the outlets, France has exposed other alleged Russian plots connected to the Olympics including one that involved laying coffins in front of the Eiffel Tower, draped in French flags that read “French soldiers of Ukraine,” an apparent reference to French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion that French troops could one day be sent to Ukraine to help it defend itself against Russia’s unprovoked war there.
Griaznov denies any wrongdoing. If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in prison.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has called the case “quite curious.”
According to phone intercepts viewed by Le Monde and Der Spiegel, Griaznov, who was also a onetime reality-TV star in Russia, blew his cover when he got kicked off a flight from Istanbul to Paris. Stranded in Bulgaria, he drunkenly called his handlers in Russia and boasted he was going to give Paris an “opening ceremony like no other.”
While on vacation in the Black Sea, Griaznov also got drunk in a beach-side restaurant and let it slip that he had a special assignment this summer in Paris, according to the investigation by Le Monde and Der Spiegel.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Paris Olympics: France probes new sabotage acts, on cut fiber cables
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