The ultra-left activist was reportedly arrested this Monday in connection with the sabotage attack on France’s high-speed rail network last week.
It is the first publicly announced arrest made since the sabotage attack, which took place on Friday hours before the Olympic Games opening ceremony got underway.
The man was detained at Oissel on Sunday and had access keys to SNCF technical premises, tools and literature linked to the ultra-left, a source told French news agency AFP, who asked not to be named.
The suspect was placed in police custody for questioning in Rouen, the main city of France’s Normandy region.
Saboteurs struck the network on Friday with pre-dawn strikes on signal substations and cables at critical points, causing travel chaos hours before the opening ceremony in Paris.
“We have identified the profiles of several people,” Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told France 2 TV, adding that the sabotage bore the hallmarks of far-left groups.
Rise in far-left ‘clandestine actions’
In recent years, France has been targeted in attacks by Islamist militants, but security services have been increasingly concerned about ultra-left or anarchist militants, who typically oppose the state and capitalism.
The then-head of France’s domestic intelligence agency, Nicolas Lerner, told Le Monde newspaper last year that French President Emmanuel Macron’s divisive 2023 pension shake-up had helped lure recruits to far-left groups, which have increasingly incorporated ecological issues into their ideologies.
“In recent years, the far-left movements have been known for particularly violent clandestine actions, including arson campaigns … ransacking and destruction of property,” Lerner – who now leads the French DGSE intelligence agency – said in the interview.
Trains return to normal
This comes as train services across France were back up and running ‘next to normal’ on Monday morning, after teams worked around the clock over the weekend to fix the damage, according to Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete.
Vergriete said that some 800,000 people had faced travel disruptions and said the cost to the state-owned rail operator SNCF would be considerable.
In a separate incident, fibre optic networks of several telecommunications operators were reportedly “sabotaged” in six areas of France on Monday, but Paris has not been affected.
