PARIS (Reuters) – French security services rejected more than 4,000 applications for Paris 2024 Olympics accreditations, including over espionage and cyberattack concerns, the country’s caretaker interior minister said on Sunday.
Gerald Darmanin said French authorities have so far checked close to one million accreditation requests for the Games that kick off on July 26 and had rejected 4,340 people, some over radical Islamist connections or suspicion of being foreign spies.
Close to one hundred were rejected over espionage fears or concerns they were agents trying to get an accreditation using a different profession.
“They are probably not there to carry out attacks. But in addition to intelligence and traditional espionage, there is the possibility of accessing entry points into computer networks to carry out a cyberattack,” Darmanin told the weekly Journal du Dimanche.
He said they had applied as journalists or technical staff and their countries of origin were Russia and Belarus, among others, which he did not name.
“For example, we refused a large number of ‘journalists’ who claimed to cover the Games. On the other hand, we accepted the presence of Russians who work for the International Olympic Committee (IOC). We apply the precautionary principle,” he said.
Russian journalists have been allowed to get accredited for the Games and have already arrived in the French capital.
Paris will be deploying 45,000 security personnel to guarantee the safety of the Games and its unique opening ceremony along the river Seine where athletes will float on barges past hundreds of thousands of spectators.
Organisers have reduced the initial number of spectators from 600,000 to around 300,000.
“To our knowledge, we have no known threat to the security of the Olympic Games,” Darmanin said.
“In the past days I did a new reconnaissance by boat on the Seine with the police. I confirm that the ceremony will take place in the format announced by the President of the Republic.”
“Apart from the flow of the river and the low risk of bad weather, there is – to date – no identified threat to the Games. Neither our intelligence services nor the foreign services with which we coordinate have detected any foreign threat. But you have to stay very humble and focused.”
(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; editing by Giles Elgood)
