French authorities were negligent, resulting in serious incidents leading up to the 2022 Champions League final in Paris between Real Madrid and Liverpool, exposing fans to great physical danger and mistakes made by all those responsible.
This is evident from the conclusions of the independent commission of inquiry commissioned by UEFA following those riots on May 28 near the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, which will be published this Monday by the French newspaper Le Monde.
This committee, made up of experts, university students, lawyers and representatives of fan associations, believes that UEFA and the French authorities have made serious mistakes and that both, along with the French Football Federation and several ministers, have “acted irresponsibly”. responsibility”.
The conclusions indicate that the organizers failed to consider the impact on fans of narrowing access to manage terrorist risks, exposing English and Spanish people to high-risk situations through crushing.
Security, they add, was meant to prevent a confrontation between the two hobbies, an unreal risk, as most fans were peaceful, but they forgot to face the dangers of crime that fans traditionally fall victim to in France and especially in Saint-Dennis.
The report also denies that Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, who spoke of “massive fraud” with tickets, is not an “exaggerated problem”, according to the authors, for which they deem the government member “irresponsible”.
In addition, he believes that giving too much importance to this phenomenon led to the installation of amateur filter points that were too narrow, exposing them to avalanches.
For hours, the fans were exposed to the criminals, with no police intervention, increasing the number of attacks.
As tensions rose, police opted to use tear gas, a solution experts deem inappropriate and prompted by the lack of troops.
The wind pushed these gases into an area where thousands of England fans were waiting peacefully, who started a very dangerous stampede.
Faced with this, the officers threw mustard gas at them, “a product that has no place in the football festival,” “totally inappropriate and disproportionate, as well as potentially deadly,” according to the 151-page report, which notes that it’s almost a miracle that there were no deaths.
A translation error put hundreds of agents on the field, while there was a lack of troops in the area to assist in the evacuation as the fans were once again exposed to the criminals.
The report ends with 21 recommendations to ensure that these events do not happen again, especially when the Stade de France hosts the 2024 Olympics in just over a year.
Source: El heraldo
I’m George Gonzalez, a professional journalist and author at The Nation View. With more than 5 years of experience in the field, I specialize in covering sports news for various print media outlets. My passion for writing has enabled me to craft stories that capture the attention of readers all over the world.
