Attack on a relay antenna: homes without internet, what do we know about the “NO J.O” claim ?

À Saint-Orens de Gameville, in p&amp In the Toulouse suburbs, a relay antenna was set on fire. More than 2,000 subscribers are left without means of communication. An attack claimed by an anti-Olympic far-left group.

On the night of Friday 25 to Saturday 26 July, a telephone relay antenna was set on fire in Saint-Orens de Gameville, near Toulouse in Haute-Garonne. A “NO J.O.” tag was found near the scene. The public prosecutor's office has opened an investigation and is not closing the door on an anti-Olympic Games far-left claim.

Especially after the strange message broadcast by the Toulouse ultra-left group “Bad players”: “At the stadium as in life, let's take the turn of resistance”, we can read in a press release relayed by this local group. For the moment, it is impossible to know if the tag was done before or after the fire. The group claims that there is no “Olympic truce”, citing in particular the displacement of the most marginalized populations “out of Paris to host the global event.

“Their claims are sometimes fallacious”

“In Saint-Orens de Gameville, on the outskirts of Toulouse, “it seems that a Toulouse far-left group has relayed” a claim by a national group, without there being any certainty (…) since their claims are sometimes fallacious: they attribute to themselves actions that are not theirs,” indicates the prosecution.

Problem, this town of 11,000 inhabitants now finds itself in a real mess, many users no longer benefit from any means of communication. Internet, landline telephone, payment terminals for merchants… The malicious act caused heavy damage. “We shared the connection from our phone, my 4G” explains a butcher from the town to BFMTV to allow some residents who pay by credit card not to be disadvantaged.

2,000 people impacted on the outskirts of Toulouse

“When we discuss, in a democracy, we do it openly, we do not attack a population, we do not target it. Here it is the entire population that supports the defense of ideas that we can sometimes understand, but find difficult to admit,” regrets Serge Jop, mayor of Saint-Orens de Gameville. In total, more than 2,000 landline subscribers were left without services after the fire, with the wiring of three operators having been impacted, Haute-Garonne firefighters told AFP.

At the national level, a complaint email sent to several media outlets

In the process, an anonymous email claiming responsibility for the attack on the SNCF TGV network in the name of a desire to sabotage the Olympic Games was sent to several media outlets on Saturday, July 27. The rhetoric of the text is reminiscent of that of the ultra-left movement. Investigators are studying this lead but question the authenticity of this claim.

Jacques Morel, general of the gendarmerie, wonders about “an unexpected delegation”: “&Cedil;it can also look like a farce by people who want to attribute something to themselves that they did not do but who are taking advantage of the situation”, he judges on BFMTV. “Either it is indeed an organization that wants to claim its act now to put itself in the spotlight, or it has been the subject of manipulations of intoxication by people who are taking advantage of an unfortunate event to be able to sow disruption during this period of the Olympic Games.”