Month: July 2024

paris — A year ago, the head of the Paris Olympics boldly declared that France’s capital would be ” the safest place in the world ” when the Games open this Friday. Tony Estanguet’s confident forecast looks less far-fetched now with squadrons of police patrolling Paris’ streets, fighter jets and soldiers primed to scramble, and imposing metal-fence security barriers erected like an iron curtain on both sides of the River Seine that will star in the opening show.

France’s vast police and military operation is in large part because the July 26-August 11 Games face unprecedented security challenges. The city has repeatedly suffered deadly extremist attacks, and international tensions are high because of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Rather than build an Olympic park with venues grouped together outside of the city center, like Rio de Janeiro in 2016 or London in 2012, Paris has chosen to host many of the events in the heart of the bustling capital of 2 million inhabitants, with others dotted around suburbs that house millions more. Putting temporary sports arenas in public spaces and the unprecedented choice to stage a river-borne opening ceremony stretching for kilometers along the Seine, makes safeguarding them more complex.

Olympic organizers also have cyberattack concerns, while rights campaigners and Games critics are worried about Paris’ use of AI-equipped surveillance technology and the broad scope and scale of Olympic security.

Paris, in short, has a lot riding on keeping 10,500 athletes and millions of visitors safe. Here’s how it aims to do it.

The security operation, by the numbers

A Games-time force of up to 45,000 police and gendarmes is also backed up by a 10,000-strong contingent of soldiers that has set up the largest military camp in Paris since World War II, from which soldiers should be able to reach any of the city’s Olympic venues within 30 minutes.

Armed military patrols aboard vehicles and on foot have become common in crowded places in France since gunmen and suicide bombers acting in the names of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group repeatedly struck Paris in 2015. They don’t have police powers of arrest but can tackle attackers and restrain them until police arrive. For visitors from countries where armed street patrols aren’t the norm, the sight of soldiers with assault rifles might be jarring, just as it was initially for people in France.

“At the beginning, it was very strange for them to see us and they were always avoiding our presence, making a detour,” said General Eric Chasboeuf, deputy commander of the counter-terror military force, called Sentinelle.

“Now, it’s in the landscape,” he said.

Rafale fighter jets, airspace-monitoring AWACS surveillance flights, Reaper surveillance drones, helicopters that can carry sharpshooters, and equipment to disable drones will police Paris skies, which will be closed during the opening ceremony by a no-fly zone extending for 150 kilometers (93.2 miles) around the capital. Cameras twinned with artificial intelligence software — authorized by a law that expands the state’s surveillance powers for the Games — will flag potential security risks, such as abandoned packages or crowd surges.

France is also getting help from more than 40 countries that, together, have sent at least 1,900 police reinforcements.

Trump assassination attempt highlights Olympic risks

Attacks by lone individuals are major concern, a risk driven home most recently to French officials by the assassination attempt against former U.S. President and current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Some involved in the Olympic security operation were stunned that the gunman armed with an AR-style rifle got within range of the former president.

“No one can guarantee that there won’t be mistakes. There, however, it was quite glaring,” said General Philippe Pourque, who oversaw the construction of a temporary camp in southeast Paris housing 4,500 soldiers from the Sentinelle force.

In France, in the last 13 months alone, men acting alone have carried out knife attacks that targeted tourists in Paris, and children in a park in an Alpine town, among others. A man who stabbed a teacher to death at his former high school in northern France in October had been under surveillance by French security services for suspected Islamic radicalization.

With long and bitter experience of deadly extremist attacks, France has armed itself with a dense network of police units, intelligence services and investigators who specialize in fighting terrorism, and suspects in terrorism cases can be held longer for questioning.

Hundreds of thousands of background checks have scrutinized Olympic ticket-holders, workers and others involved in the Games and applicants for passes to enter Paris’ most tightly controlled security zone, along the Seine’s banks. The checks blocked more than 3,900 people from attending, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said. He said some were flagged for suspected Islamic radicalization, left- or right-wing political extremism, significant criminal records and other security concerns.

“We’re particularly attentive to Russian and Belorussian citizens,” Darmanin added, although he stopped short of linking exclusions to Russia’s war in Ukraine and Belarus’ role as an ally of Moscow.

Darmanin said 155 people considered to be “very dangerous” potential terror threats are also being kept away from the opening ceremony and the Games, with police searching their homes for weapons and computers in some cases.

He said intelligence services haven’t identified any proven terror plots against the Games “but we are being extremely attentive.”

Critics fear intrusive Olympic security will stay after Games

Campaigners for digital rights worry that Olympic surveillance cameras and AI systems could erode privacy and other freedoms, and zero in on people without fixed homes who spend a lot of time in public spaces.

Saccage 2024, a group that has campaigned for months against the Paris Games, took aim at the scope of the Olympic security, describing it as a “repressive arsenal” in a statement to The Associated Press.

“And this is not a French exception, far from it, but a systematic occurrence in host countries,” it said. “Is it reasonable to offer one month of ‘festivities’ to the most well-off tourists at the cost of a long-term securitization legacy for all residents of the city and the country?”
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Warsaw, Poland — Belarus and Germany are holding “consultations” over the fate of a German man reportedly sentenced to death by a court in Minsk last month, Belarus’s foreign ministry said Saturday. 

Rico Krieger, 30, was convicted under six articles of Belarus’s criminal code including “terrorism” and “mercenary activity” at a secretive trial held at the end of June, according to Belarusian rights group Viasna. 

“Taking into account a request from the German Foreign Ministry, Belarus has proposed concrete solutions on the available options for developing the situation,” Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Anatoly Glaz said. 

“The foreign ministries of the two countries are holding consultations on this topic,” he added. 

Few details have been published about the case. 

Part of the court proceedings were held behind closed doors, the exact allegations against the man were not immediately clear and there has been little information in Belarusian state media about the trial. 

According to a LinkedIn profile that Viasna said belonged to Krieger, he worked as a medic for the German Red Cross and had previously been employed as an armed security officer for the U.S. Embassy in Berlin. 

A source at the German Foreign Ministry told AFP on Friday that it and the embassy in Minsk were “providing the person in question with consular services and are making intensive representations to the Belarusian authorities on his behalf.” 

The source added that “the death penalty is a cruel and inhuman form of punishment that Germany rejects under all circumstances.” 

Belarus is reported to have executed as many as 400 people since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, according to Amnesty International.  

But executions of foreign citizens are rare.  

The country is run as an authoritarian regime by long-time leader Alexander Lukashenko, who has detained thousands of dissidents and civic activists who oppose him. 
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SHUSHA, Azerbaijan — Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev pledged Saturday to help France’s overseas territories secure independence, the latest in a series of incidents pitting his ex-Soviet state against Paris over long-running conflicts in the Caucasus region. 

Aliyev accuses France of interfering in its affairs over its contacts with Armenia, against which it has waged two wars in 30 years linked to disputes over Baku’s breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. 

In recent months, Azerbaijani leaders have focused on France’s South Pacific territory of New Caledonia, gripped by weeks of violence over the objections of Indigenous Kanak activists to a contentious electoral reform. 

Aliyev made his latest comments at a media forum days before the opening of the Olympic Games in Paris and just after the staging in Baku of a congress bringing together pro-independence groups from New Caledonia and other French territories. 

“We will support you until you are free,” Aliyev told the forum, citing French territories that he said were still subject to colonialism. 

“Some countries are still suffering from this. The Comoros islands, Mayotte are still under colonial rule. It has been our duty to help these countries liberate themselves from this revolting remnant from the past.” 

Accusations of meddling

Earlier this week, an “initiative group” staged a congress in Baku attended by pro-independence groups from New Caledonia and other French territories, including Corsica and Caribbean and Pacific islands. 

French media accounts of the meeting said participants sharply criticized French authorities and an Azerbaijani delegation was invited to visit New Caledonia. 

France accused Azerbaijan in May of meddling and abetting unrest in New Caledonia by flooding social media with what it said were misleading photos and videos targeting French police. 

Azerbaijan has denied the allegations. 

Azerbaijani authorities accuse France of bias in favor of Armenia in efforts to achieve a peace treaty to end three decades of conflict and in signing defense contracts with authorities in Yerevan. Azerbaijan expelled two French diplomats last December. 
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Nicosia, Cyprus — Greek Cypriots mourned and Turkish Cypriots rejoiced Saturday, the 50th anniversary of Turkey’s invasion of part of the island after a brief Greek inspired coup, with the chances of reconciliation as elusive as ever.

The ethnically split island is a persistent source of tension between Greece and Turkey, which are both partners in NATO but are at odds over numerous issues.

Their differences were laid bare Saturday, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attending a celebratory military parade in north Nicosia to mark the day in 1974 when Turkish forces launched an offensive that they called a “peace operation.”

“The Cyprus Peace Operation saved Turkish Cypriots from cruelty and brought them to freedom,” Erdogan told cheering crowds who gathered in north Nicosia.”We are ready for negotiations, to meet, and to establish long-term peace and resolution in Cyprus,” he said, adding that Greek and Greek Cypriot calls to reunite Cyprus under a federal umbrella — which are prescribed in U.N. resolutions — are no longer possible.

Greek Cypriots want reunification as a federation. Turkish Cypriots want a two-state settlement.

“We have one aim: a Republic of Cyprus with a single sovereignty, a single international personality, a single nationality, in a bizonal, bicommunal federation, a single state where all citizens will be Cypriots and Europeans, without a foreign occupation army, without outdated guarantees,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told a somber event in the southern parts of Nicosia in remembrance of 1974.

Greece and Turkey recently agreed to discuss how to improve relations, but “the fact that we have been discussing doesn’t mean that we agree and, more importantly, that we back down,” Mitsotakis said.

Remembering the dead

Cyprus gained independence from Britain in 1960, but a shared administration between Greek and Turkish Cypriots quickly fell apart in violence that saw Turkish Cypriots withdraw into enclaves and led to the dispatch of a U.N. peacekeeping force.

The crisis left Greek Cypriots running the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus, a member of the European Union since 2004 with the potential to derail Turkey’s own decadeslong aspirations of joining the bloc.

It also complicates any attempts to unlock energy potential in the eastern Mediterranean because of overlapping claims. The region has seen major discoveries of hydrocarbons in recent years.

Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides, whose office represents the Greek Cypriot community in the reunification dialogue, said the anniversary was a somber occasion for reflection and for remembering the dead.

“The condemnable and unacceptable events we see happening in Ukraine today … were perpetrated 50 years ago in Cyprus and we are living its consequences every day,” he said.

Across the south, church services were held to remember the more than 3,000 people who died in the Turkish invasion.

“It was a betrayal of Cyprus and so many kids were lost. It wasn’t just my son, it was many,” said Loukas Alexandrou, 90, as he tended the grave of his son at a military cemetery.

In Turkey, blanket state television coverage focused on violence against Turkish Cypriots prior to the invasion, particularly on bloodshed in 1963-64 and in 1967.

Turkey’s invasion took more than a third of the island and expelled more than 160,000 Greek Cypriots to the south.

Reunification talks collapsed in 2017 and have been at a stalemate since. Northern Cyprus is a breakaway state recognized only by Turkey, and its Turkish Cypriot leadership wants international recognition.
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TIRANA, Albania — A member of Albania’s ethnic Greek minority returned to prison Saturday after a five-day reprieve to attend the opening session of the European Parliament where he was elected to represent Greece’s ruling party.

Fredis Beleris, who holds dual Greek-Albanian citizenship, is serving a two-year prison sentence for vote-buying in municipal elections last year in Albania. He denies the charges, and Greece has described the case against him as being politically motivated.

“I am not sorry to go back to the cell,” said Beleris upon landing at Tirana International Airport.

The 51-year-old politician won the European Parliament after getting a place on Greece’s governing New Democracy party ticket in last month’s European elections. He received 238,801 votes, the fourth among the seven members elected for the party.

European Parliament members enjoy legal immunity from prosecution within the 27-state bloc, even for allegations relating to crimes committed prior to their election. But Albania is not an EU member yet.

Beleris was arrested two days before the May 14, 2023, municipal elections in Himara, with a large ethnic Greek minority in the town on the Albanian Riviera, 220 kilometers (140 miles) southwest of the capital Tirana. He was charged with offering about 40,000 Albanian leks ($390) to buy eight votes.

He won last year’s municipal election with a 19-vote lead, backed by the ethnic Greek minority party and others opposing Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s governing Socialists. But he never took office, being detained until his court conviction in March.

An appeals court upheld the ruling last month, and Albanian authorities stripped Beleris of his post as mayor of Himara, where a new election will be held August 4.
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Paris — Airlines were gradually coming back online Saturday after global carriers, banks and financial institutions were thrown into turmoil by one of the biggest IT crashes in recent years, caused by an update to an antivirus program.

Passenger crowds had swelled at airports Friday to wait for news as dozens of flights were canceled and operators struggled to keep services on track, after an update to a program operating on Microsoft Windows crashed systems worldwide.

Multiple U.S. airlines and airports across Asia said they were now resuming operations, with check-in services restored in Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand, and mostly back to normal in India and Indonesia and at Singapore’s Changi Airport as of Saturday afternoon.

“The check-in systems have come back to normal [at Thailand’s five major airports]. There are no long queues at the airports as we experienced yesterday,” Airports of Thailand President Keerati Kitmanawat told reporters at Don Mueang airport in Bangkok.

Microsoft said the issue began at 1900 GMT on Thursday, affecting Windows users running the CrowdStrike Falcon cybersecurity software.

CrowdStrike said it had rolled out a fix for the problem, and the company’s boss, George Kurtz, told U.S. news channel CNBC he wanted to “personally apologize to every organization, every group and every person who has been impacted.”

It also said it could take a few days to return to normal.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s team was talking to CrowdStrike and those affected by the glitch “and is standing by to provide assistance as needed,” the White House said in a statement.

“Our understanding is that flight operations have resumed across the country, although some congestion remains,” a senior US administration official said.

Other industries

Reports from the Netherlands and Britain suggested health services might have been affected by the disruption, meaning the full impact might not yet be known.

Media companies were also hit, with Britain’s Sky News saying the glitch had ended its Friday morning news broadcasts, and Australia’s ABC similarly reporting major difficulties.

By Saturday, services in Australia had mostly returned to normal, but Sydney Airport was still reporting flight delays.

Australian authorities warned of an increase in scam and phishing attempts following the outage, including people offering to help reboot computers and asking for personal information or credit card details.

Banks in Kenya and Ukraine reported issues with their digital services, while some mobile phone carriers were disrupted and customer services in a number of companies went down.

“The scale of this outage is unprecedented and will no doubt go down in history,” said Junade Ali of Britain’s Institution of Engineering and Technology, adding that the last incident approaching the same scale was in 2017.

 

Flight chaos

While some airports halted all flights, in others airline staff resorted to manual check-ins for passengers, leading to long lines and frustrated travelers.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration initially ordered all flights grounded “regardless of destination,” although airlines later said they were reestablishing their services and working through the backlog.

India’s largest airline, Indigo, said operations had been “resolved,” in a statement posted on social media platform X.

“While the outage has been resolved and our systems are back online, we are diligently working to resume normal operations, and we expect this process to extend into the weekend,” the carrier said Saturday.

A passenger told AFP that the situation was returning to normal at Delhi Airport by midnight on Saturday with only slight delays in international flights.

Low-cost carrier AirAsia said it was still trying to get back online and had been “working around the clock toward recovering its departure control systems” after the global outage. It recommended passengers arrive early at airports and be ready for “manual check-in” at airline counters.

Chinese state media said Beijing’s airports had not been affected.

In Europe, major airports, including Berlin’s, which had suspended all flights earlier on Friday, said departures and arrivals were resuming.

‘Common cause’

Companies were left patching up their systems and trying to assess the damage, even as officials tried to tamp down panic by ruling out foul play.

CrowdStrike’s Kurtz said in a statement his teams were “fully mobilized” to help affected customers and “a fix has been deployed.”

But Oli Buckley, a professor at Britain’s Loughborough University, was one of many experts who questioned the ease of rolling out a proper fix.

“While experienced users can implement the workaround, expecting millions to do so is impractical,” he said.

Other experts said the incident should prompt a widespread reconsideration of how reliant societies are on a handful of tech companies for such an array of services.

“We need to be aware that such software can be a common cause of failure for multiple systems at the same time,” said John McDermid, a professor at York University in Britain.

He said infrastructure should be designed “to be resilient against such common cause problems.”
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Jerusalem — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stubborn opposition to a Palestinian state does not deter the European Union’s Middle East peace envoy from believing a two-state solution remains achievable.

Sven Koopmans, in an interview with AFP, said with the Gaza war ongoing and Israel needing international support, Netanyahu’s government cannot indefinitely disregard European views on resolving the conflict.

Netanyahu and some ministers in his right-wing government staunchly oppose the creation of a Palestinian state, which many argue has become even more urgent since the October 7 Hamas attacks sparked the devastating war.

“I think that recently he was very explicit about rejecting the two-state solution,” Koopmans said. “Now, that means that he has a different point of view from much of the rest of the world.”

The Dutch diplomat said one side’s rejection of “the outcome that we believe is necessary” does not mean efforts to seek a solution should cease.

Last month the European Union invited Israel to discuss Gaza and human rights.

Israel agreed to a meeting after July 1, when Hungary, which supports Netanyahu’s government, assumed the EU presidency.

“It is important that we have that discussion,” said Koopmans. “I am sure that in such a meeting, there will be very substantive discussions about what we expect from our partner Israel. And that relates to things that we do not see at present.”

‘Relevant actor’

Koopmans said it was “completely unacceptable” for there to be thousands of aid trucks waiting at the Gaza border.

The envoy also raised concerns about Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank, saying some attacks amounted to “genuine terrorism.”

Named as special representative for the peace process in 2021, Koopmans said the European Union was one of the most energetic institutions pushing for a two-state solution.

Koopmans said his work was guided by the EU’s 1980 declaration recognizing the “right to existence and to security” for Israel and “the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.”

The declaration called Israeli settlements on Palestinian land “a serious obstacle to the peace process.”

The European bloc was only nine members then, and Koopmans acknowledged divisions within the 27 existing members on the Middle East strife.

But he insisted the bloc “should not make ourselves smaller than we are.”

He highlighted that the 27 countries, with a combined population of 450 million people, were Israel’s largest trading partner and the top aid donor to the Palestinians.

“We are the biggest political neighbor to both of them. Of course, we are not the biggest security provider, let’s be honest. But we are a big and relevant actor,” he said.

EU nuances

Koopmans listed his top priorities as ending the suffering in Gaza, preventing a regional war between Israel and Hezbollah, and reviving the peace process to establish “a free state of Palestine living alongside a safe and secure Israel.”

The envoy acknowledged the “different nuances” of EU members on the Middle East.

Spain and Ireland joined non-EU member Norway in recognizing a Palestinian state this year.

Hungary and the Czech Republic have on the other hand sought to block EU sanctions against Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

The Palestinian state recognitions infuriated Israel, while Koopmans said the move could “contribute” to a solution to the conflict.

The European Union is also a major backer of the Palestinian Authority, which many countries say Israel seeks to undermine.

“We want to see the P.A. thrive. We want it to have an ability to govern in an effective and legitimate manner,” said Koopmans. “We want to strengthen the PA also so that it can again take over in Gaza when the time is there.”

The European Union met with foreign ministers from Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in May, and Koopmans said there were “positive reactions” to its proposals.
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