PARIS : Round 50 khaki-clad males driving atop a black armoured truck approached an deserted place of job development at the outskirts of Paris one spring morning and blew open a second-storey window with an explosive instrument.
After clearing shards of glass from the window body, they shuffled throughout the gaping hollow and into the graffiti-covered development looking for hostages – in fact junior participants of the Gendarmerie – held inside of.
The learning workout, held in preparation for the July 26-Aug. 11 Olympic Video games, used to be one of the most ultimate get dressed rehearsals for an tournament no one needs to occur.
Based 50 years in the past after the 1972 Munich Olympics bloodbath, wherein 11 Israelis died in an assault via a Palestinian militant staff, the GIGN is considered one of France’s elite tactical gadgets, chargeable for liberating hostages, counter-terrorism operations and different high-stake raids.
Will have to such an incident happen on the Video games, which shall be a step nearer to truth on Wednesday night when the Olympic torch arrives in Marseille, the GIGN shall be summoned.
Ghislain Rety, commander of the GIGN, mentioned his group used to be in a position.
“It could be cheating to mention there’s no chance, however it’s minimized up to imaginable,” he mentioned.
Rety said a definite symmetry between the GIGN’s foundation tale and its Olympic venture however was hoping the power can have a good time its anniversary with out being known as into motion.
Paris has been on excessive alert since 2015 Islamist assaults that killed 130 other folks and injured loads extra. Nonetheless, the Olympics, and in particular the Opening Rite, constitute a safety problem like no different.
With 300,000 other folks gazing from the river banks and tens of millions extra tuning in on TV, the rite is because of happen on barges alongside a 6-kilometer stretch of the Seine.
Wars in Ukraine and Gaza have sophisticated safety making plans, and French President Emmanuel Macron has floated probably scrapping the river rite and reverting to back-up plans.
Rety mentioned the GIGN would position two males – in simple garments, in order to not misery spectators – on every of the barges sporting athletes, with 350 GIGN officials assigned to the Opening Rite.
Sharpshooters shall be put in at the roofs of the grand structures that line the Seine, with forces additionally deployed underneath the town streets. In all, round 50,000 French police and infantrymen will safe Paris throughout the Video games, with further assist from a couple of thousand overseas safety officers.
The GIGN, which usually undertakes 8 operations an afternoon throughout France and the remainder of the sector, has been getting ready for the Olympics for round 18 months, Rety mentioned. One of the vital major difficulties have been coordination with different French forces and with overseas delegations.
“However we adore complication,” he mentioned. “It is a great problem.”
As the educational workout wound up, a camouflaged chopper landed on best of the development and collected the GIGN officials, who hooked up themselves to a rope. It then took off, dangling the boys over the suburbs of Paris earlier than they had been deposited, one after the other, again within the place of job automotive park.
