PARIS — An enquiry by the
French Senate into crowd chaos at this year's Champions League final in Paris
concluded that organizers were to blame, not supporters, undermining claims by
the police and Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin.
اضافة اعلان
A fact-finding mission led by two
senators was set up after the
Liverpool-
Real Madrid game on May 28 which was
marred by a delayed kick-off, crushes, teargas, and street crime.
The investigation concluded that the
problems were caused by a "string of dysfunctions" including a lack
of preparation by French authorities and poorly executed security arrangements.
"These dysfunctions were at
every level, not only during the implementation but also during preparations
in advance," the co-chair of the enquiry Laurent Lafon told reporters at a
press conference.
The final report contradicted
repeated statements from Darmanin that Liverpool fans were mostly responsible,
with the minister claiming that up to 40,000 of them travelled to the stadium
either with no tickets or with fake ones.
"The first statements (by the
minister) do not match up with reality," Francois-Noel Buffet, a fellow
co-chair of the investigation, told reporters.
"The conclusions of the
minister on the evening and the day after were not the right ones," Lafon
added. "It was a biased conclusion, imprecise."
Many Liverpool supporters struggled
to travel to the stadium because of a transport strike, then found themselves
in bottlenecks and crushes at the stadium entry gates.
Faced with the build-up of
frustrated fans around the Stade de France, police fired tear gas to move the
crowd back, affecting many children as well as disabled fans in wheelchairs.
After the game, visitors were preyed
on by local gangs as they made their way to local transport connections, with
many reporting pickpocketing, muggings and threats as the police looked on.
The televised events were a national
embarrassment and are thought to have influenced parliamentary elections in June
when
President Emmanuel Macron lost his majority.
'Failure'
Darmanin survived a government
reshuffle in May and has since been given extra responsibility as interior
minister despite his claims, which caused fury in Liverpool and tensions with
the British government.
Liverpool football club is
particularly sensitive to the scapegoating of its fans after they were falsely
blamed for the Hillsborough stadium disaster in Sheffield in 1989.
"The role of a commission like
ours is not to call for the resignation of someone in the government,"
Buffet said when asked why the commission had not called for Darmanin to
resign.
Instead, its final report made a
series of recommendations to authorities to improve security arrangements at
major sporting events.
France is to host the
Rugby World Cup next year and the Olympics in 2024.
Authorities have also been under
pressure to explain why security camera footage from the stadium was not saved,
removing a potentially vital source of information for investigators.
"The images will always be
missing. That's our biggest regret," Buffet said.
Darmanin, a law-and-order hardliner,
issued his first partial apology at the end of June, telling RTL radio:
"Should things have been managed better at the
Stade de France (stadium)?
The answer is yes. Am I partly responsible? The answer is yes."
The head of the Paris police, Didier
Lallement, admitted during a Senate hearing on June 9 that security operations
had been a "failure".
But he defended the use of teargas
to move fans back from the stadium, saying there was "no other way."
The Senate report recommended that
the police draw up clearer guidelines for the use of teargas and adopt other
crowd-control methods such as greater use of mounted officers and water
cannons.
France had to organize the Champions
League final in record time after offering to host the game in February when it
was stripped from Russia following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
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