With one exception, the France-Israel Nations League match this Thursday evening at the Stade de France (Saint-Denis) went “very well from a security point of view”. However, two people were arrested and taken into police custody following a “fight” in the stands, Paris police chief Laurent Nuñez said this Friday morning on France 2. “One person was arrested immediately and another after the match, once we were able to dissect what had happened on the video,” he said.
According to the Paris police chief, this “fight” was “immediately contained by the stewards of the French football federation (FFF)”. “The police, who were positioned inside the stadium, also intervened,” he added. “We were extremely reactive (…) Afterwards, there was no further incident”, also affirmed Laurent Nuñez without giving more details on the origin and profile of the people involved in this fight.
This took place in the intermediate ring of the Stade de France, where a group of French supporters and another Israeli were located. According to a witness to the scene interviewed Thursday evening by Le Parisien, hooded people ran towards the French supporters after “provocations” from French spectators.
Concerning the pro-Palestinian demonstration which was held on the sidelines of this meeting, Laurent Nuñez assures that 1,400 people were present and that no incident was to be deplored. “Fifty to a hundred people then tried to reach the Stade de France, but they were prevented,” he said. “This football match had a particular content given the geopolitical context,” he nevertheless admitted. But according to him, the police “demonstrated yesterday (THURSDAY) that the security conditions were perfectly met”.
Due to the international context and the anti-Semitic violence that occurred last week in Amsterdam, an unprecedented security system was mobilized to guarantee the security of this match. Some 2,500 police officers and gendarmes were present around the stadium and 1,500 in Paris and its transport routes. Among them were CRS and mobile gendarmes. Proof of this concern, the Stade de France rang hollow: barely more than 16,000 people went there, the worst attendance for the Blues in this stadium.
