PARIS - French security forces are screening up to a million people before the Paris Olympics, including athletes and people living close to key infrastructure, according to the interior ministry.
Ahead of the start on July 26, all 10,500 athletes selected for the Olympics and 4,400 for the Paralympics will be subjected to background checks, as will their coaches and medical staff, in addition to 26,000 accredited journalists.
“Nobody will be able to get accreditation from the organising committee unless they have been screened,” Mr Julien Dufour, head of the SNEAS screening service inside the interior ministry, told AFP in a recent interview.
“It’s for everyone, except for spectators.”
Of the 22,000 security agents and 45,000 volunteers, those with access to sensitive areas will be checked, while the 12,000 people chosen to take part in the torch relay have already been investigated.
A total of 13 people selected for the torch relay were rejected, including some who had committed drugs offences, as well as a suspected Islamist.
With events set to take place around the City of Light, including along the river Seine, Mr Dufour said people living close to sensitive locations could also be verified.
“You can imagine there are investigations on people living in some areas,” he said.
Officials will look for criminal records or mentions in national and international intelligence databases, with any findings then evaluated to see if they are disqualifying.
For example, a person with a conviction for drink-driving might be authorised “to intervene to repair a machine in a sensitive area. But it’s a real issue if they are set to become a bus driver,” Mr Dufour added.
The SNEAS, which was created in 2017, carried out 100,000 background checks for last year’s Rugby World Cup in France, but Mr Dufour declined to say how many people had been rejected.
Each host country for the Olympics carries out its own security screening.
For the 2012 Games in London, British security services checked 500,000 people, resulting in 100 being rejected, according to the Guardian newspaper.
The Olympics are set to take place from July 26-Aug 11 followed by the Paralympics from Aug 28-Sept 8.
France was placed on its highest alert for terror attacks in October after a suspected Islamist burst into a school in the north of the country and stabbed a teacher to death.
The country has been consistently targeted by Islamic extremists over the last decade, particularly by the Islamic State group, while Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza is seen as exacerbating domestic tensions. AFP
