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PARIS 2024 OLYMPICS

France excludes 800 individuals from Olympics over security fears

Around 800 people who "did not have good intentions" have been excluded from the Paris Olympics over security fears, French interior minister Gerald Darmanin said Sunday.

Published: 1 April 2024 08:55 CEST

France excludes 800 individuals from Olympics over security fears

The Paris 2024 Olympics Games flag next to European Union and French flag at the presidential Elysee Palace in Paris. Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP

The list includes 15 deemed to represent the most serious threat to national security.

“The French people must know that we absolutely check everyone who approaches the Olympic Games — so there are the volunteers, torch bearers, the people who will welcome you,” Darmanin told broadcaster LCI.

“There are a million checks to be done; we have already carried out 180,000 checks. We have excluded 800 people including 15 on ‘Fiches S’ (the dossier of the most serious threats).”

“That means that there are people who wanted to register to carry the flame, to be volunteers at the Olympic Games and who clearly did not have good intentions.”

Darmanin specified that among those excluded were “radical Islamists” and “radical ecology people who want to protest”. French security forces are screening up to a million people before the 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.

The Olympics are set to take place from July 26th-August 11th followed by the Paralympics from August 28th-September 8th.

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.

READ ALSO: France’s allies t help with Olympics security

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Olympic torch sets sail at start of its voyage to France

“The feelings are so exceptional. It’s such an emotion for me”, Tony Estanguet, Paris Olympics chief organiser, told reporters before the departure of the ship from Piraeus.

He hailed the “great coincidence” how the Belem was launched just weeks after the first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens in 1896.

“These games mean a lot. It’s been a centenary since the last time we organised the Olympic games in our country,” he added.

The 19th-century three-masted boat set sail on a calm sea but under cloudy skies.

It was accompanied off the port of Piraeus by the trireme Olympias of the Greek Navy and 25 sailing boats while dozens of people watched behind railings for security reasons.

“We came here so that the children understand that the Olympic ideal was born in Greece. I’m really moved,” Giorgos Kontopoulos, who watched the ship starting its voyage with his two children, told AFP.

On Sunday, the ship will pass from the Corinth Canal — a feat of 19th century engineering constructed with the contribution of French banks and engineers.

‘More responsible Games’

The Belem is set to reach Marseille — where a Greek colony was founded in around 600 BCE — on May 8.

Over 1,000 vessels will accompany its approach to the harbour, local officials have said.

French swimmer Florent Manaudou will be the first torch bearer in Marseille. His sister Laure was the second torch bearer in ancient Olympia, where the flame was lit on April 16.

Ten thousand torchbearers will then carry the flame across 64 French territories.

It will travel through more than 450 towns and cities, and dozens of tourist attractions during its 12,000-kilometre (7,500-mile) journey through mainland France and overseas French territories in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and Pacific.

It will then reach Paris and be the centre piece of the hugely imaginative and new approach to the Games opening ceremony.

Instead of the traditional approach of parading through the athletics stadium at the start of the Games, teams are set to sail down the Seine on a flotilla of boats in front of up to 500,000 spectators, including people watching from nearby buildings.

The torch harks back to the ancient Olympics when a sacred flame burned throughout the Games. The tradition was revived in 1936 for the Berlin Games.

Greece on Friday had handed over the Olympic flame of the 2024 Games, at a ceremony, to Estanguet.

Hellenic Olympic Committee chairman Spyros Capralos handed the torch to Estanguet at the Panathenaic Stadium, where the Olympics were held in 1896.

Estanguet said the goal for Paris was to organise “spectacular but also more responsible Games, which will contribute towards a more inclusive society.”

Organisers want to ensure “the biggest event in the world plays an accelerating role in addressing the crucial questions of our time,” said Estanguet, a member of France’s Athens 2004 Olympics team who won gold in the slalom canoe event.

A duo of French champions, Beijing 2022 ice dance gold medallist Gabriella Papadakis and former swimmer Beatrice Hess, one of the most successful Paralympians in history, carried the flame during the final relay leg into the Panathenaic Stadium.

Nana Mouskouri, the 89-year-old Greek singer with a worldwide following, sang the French and Greek anthems at the ceremony.

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