French security officials have foiled a plot to attack a soccer game at the upcoming Paris Olympics.
In a statement Friday, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said French security forces this month arrested an 18-year-old Chechen suspected of planning an attack at the Geoffroy Guichard stadium in Saint-Etienne under the banner of the Islamic State.
The teenager “wanted to attack spectators, but also security forces and die as a martyr,” Darmanin said.
France is on its highest security alert level ahead of the Olympic Games beginning in less than two months.
According to the French News Agency, the Chechen national has been charged with terrorist conspiracy and is in pre-trial detention.
The Paris Olympics organizing committee said in a statement, “We applaud the efficiency of the (law enforcement) services and their exceptional mobilization to ensure the security of the Games.”
The Paris Olympics will take place from July 26 to August 11. There have been security concerns about the upcoming Games, especially with the large, elaborate opening ceremony that France wanted along the Seine, but security officials persuaded the Olympics planners to scale back their plans and the number of people invited.
The French News Agency reports the Olympic torch relay is underway and is surrounded by a “security bubble” of 100 officers that includes anti-drone specialists and anti-terror police on the 12,000-kilometer journey. During the first three weeks of the relay, the news agency reports, 78 people who tried to disrupt the events were arrested and 30 suspected drones were intercepted.
The Olympic Games have been targeted before — most notably the attack on the Israeli Olympic team in Munich at the Summer Games in 1972 and the pipe bomb attack in a public park in 1996 at the Olympic Games in Atlanta.
In 2020, a teenage Chechen national stabbed and beheaded a teacher near the victim’s secondary school outside Paris. Police shot and killed the attacker at the scene in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.
Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
