Armed intrusion on the field, intimidation… In Saint-Nazaire, a Football club facing insecurity

Unprecedented tensions within a small sports association. This fall, two training sessions of the Saint-Marc Football Club, organized in Saint-Nazaire, on a field in the sensitive Bouletterie district, were disturbingly disrupted by groups of young people. The first incident took place in the presence of around twenty individuals, gathered around the edge of the field, on the lookout and armed with iron bars. The second was more spectacular, with the burst onto the lawn of young people on motorbikes, at least one of whom was said to have been carrying a firearm. All this, while minors from the club trained on the field.

A police source was able to confirm Figaro this two-part sequence revealed by our colleagues from West France and which would have taken place between the end of October and the beginning of November. When asked, the club management did not wish to react to these incidents which did not cause any injuries. Speaking to the local press, the president of Saint-Marc, Yasmine Arabi-Katbi, however admitted not having “never experienced that” in ten years of football. “We have been told that young people have had difficulty sleeping. Parents no longer wanted to take their children to training. We had a few absences”she confides again.

Murder at the Boulletterie

The intimidation and the attempt to settle scores would have targeted in particular a young graduate of Saint-Marc, under the pretext of a rivalry with poorly defined contours. The target of these aggressive actions was fortunately not present at the time of the events. Between the two incidents, a match for the club’s U18 team – to which the teenager belongs – took place on October 26 between the young people of Saint-Marc and those of Saint-Nazaire Atlantique Football (SNAF). Given the tensions, the meeting had to be relocated from the Bouletterie district to that of Bellevue.

Ultimately, the Saint-Marc club made the decision to part ways with the teenager at the center of the fall’s troubles. Since then, the situation has calmed down. At least, when it comes to sporting activities. Because in La Bouletterie, as in other sensitive neighborhoods of Saint-Nazaire, the fall was particularly harsh, and marked by a wave of attacks, gunshots and settling of scores. At the beginning of December, an investigation into an assassination was opened after the execution of a 19-year-old young man, shot dead by an armed commando at his family home in La Bouletterie.