Paris 2024 removes 3,570 potentially dangerous people from the Olympics

Gérald Darmanin, French Interior Minister. GETTY IMAGES

Some 770,000 administrative checks have led to the exclusion from the Olympic and Paralympic Games of 3,512 people who could pose a threat to the security of the event, Gérald Darmanin announced on the X social network on Saturday 13 July.

In particular, 130 people on the S list (state security), 16 people on the Islamist radicalisation list and “dozens of radicals close to Islamist, far-left and far-right circles” had been denied accreditation, the interior minister said.

In total, nearly one million people, including athletes, coaches, journalists, volunteers, private security guards and even local residents at the opening ceremony, who will take part in any way in the Paris Olympic Games (26 July-11 August) and Paralympic Games (28 August-8 September) will be subject to advance security checks and will need a QR code to move around certain areas.

According to the Minister of the Interior, “it is the right time” to achieve this goal before the start of the Olympic Games. On 25 June, 30 days before the start of the event, the number of exclusions from the organisation stood at 2,720, according to Gérald Darmanin in an interview with Le Parisien-Today in France. 

At the beginning of April, 800 people who applied to volunteer for the Olympic and Paralympic Games were rejected, including 15 who were registered as potential threats. One thousand private agents were also rejected, including 102 with criminal records. Last January, Paris 2024 also said ‘no’ to 13 people selected as torchbearers with criminal backgrounds, some linked to drug trafficking and one suspected of belonging to an Islamist group.

Starting with the opening ceremony on 26 July, which will take place in a parade of some 160 boats on the Seine in central Paris rather than in a stadium, security has been a major headache for the authorities.

As Insidethegames reported in early June, citing the ‘Insikt Group’, the Paris 2024 Organising Committee is focusing on several key security issues: cybercriminal activity, hacktivist disruption, state-sponsored espionage and influence operations, civil unrest and disruptive protests, and terrorist threats.



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