Arsonists used crude methods but disruption to opening of the Olympic Games in Paris was severe
It was about 1.15am when the SNCF maintenance workers, carrying out repairs by moonlight, spotted the group of people a little further down the railway line near a signal box outside the sleepy village of Vergigny, in the northern French department of Yonne.
They were concerned enough by the unlikely sight at such an hour to approach the intruders, and then to make a call to the local police as those they had interrupted ran off into the dark.
That sighting, along with the remains of incendiary devices left behind at what are now crime scenes across the French rail network, is set to form a crucial part of the investigation into what was on Friday being described by one Socialist senator as the “destabilisation, sabotage and the calling into question of the image of France” on the eve of the opening of the Olympic Games in Paris.
The methods used by the arsonists appear to be crude – starting fires to destroy the fibre optic cables at signal boxes along France’s high-speed rail lines – but the damage has been no less severe for it.
“It’s a huge security job, it’s meticulous, it’s wire by wire that we have to repair all these cables that have been damaged and burned,” said Jean-Pierre Farandou, chief executive of the SNCF.
Beyond charred cables and the fleeting sight of some of the arsonists, a further line of inquiry is a possibly related incident in May.
It emerged on Friday that an incendiary device had also been discovered on the Aix-Marseille TGV line on 8 May, when the Olympic flame was arriving in the region.
