Nabil, Amine, Francois and others won’t be attending the Paris Olympics. The French government has barred them from the event.
In an unprecedented move, French authorities are using the so-called anti-terror laws to keep hundreds of individuals deemed potential security risks far from France’s largest-ever event.
Many affected individuals are minorities from former French colonies, facing restrictions such as being confined to their neighborhoods and required to report daily to the police.
Lawyers are alarmed by what one describes as "a terribly dangerous tool" in the fight against terrorism.
Among those restricted are a man who had mental health issues in the past but is now receiving treatment, an apprentice bank worker and business student who believes he’s targeted due to his Muslim background and his father’s Moroccan heritage, and a halal food delivery driver who risks losing his job due to the restrictions, their lawyers say.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin says the restrictions aim to prevent "very dangerous” individuals from attacking the Games.
He has applied them to more than 500 people this year as part of France's security preparations for the Games and the Olympic torch relay that preceded the July 26 opening ceremony.
Those affected include Amine, the bank apprentice now forbidden from leaving his suburb south of Paris except to report daily at 6:30 p.m. to a local police station.
The 21-year-old, born in France, has no criminal record and has not been charged with any crime, he and his lawyer said.
Amine believes French intelligence services have mistaken him for someone else who posted disturbing visuals on a video-sharing app.
The Associated Press (AP) is not identifying Amine by his full name due to his fear of potential repercussions from employers and schools.
"I am not dangerous for France. I am not a terrorist. I am just a student working to finance his studies,” Amine said in an interview at his studio apartment, which is filled with books and family photos.
Police visited twice in the last four months.
They first broke down a neighbor’s door, seemingly by mistake, and then seized Amine’s phone and computer, making it harder for him to study.
The second visit, a month before the Games, was to notify him of his movement restrictions.
"If my name were Brian, if I were blonde and blue-eyed, the situation would be different. But I am a North African Muslim, and I’ve been targeted in France," he said.
Fearing terror attacks, French authorities have significantly ramped up security for the Games, deploying up to 45,000 police officers, soldiers armed with assault rifles, and intelligence services to identify and neutralize potential threats.
Interior Ministry notes seen by the AP indicate security services have thwarted several alleged terror plots ahead of the Games, with Olympic football matches and France’s Jewish community among suspected targets.
The ministry also notes that the Israel-Hamas conflict has heightened the terror risk in France, which has the largest Muslim and Jewish communities in Europe.
The preventive anti-terror effort includes the broad use of police powers to restrict the movements of people deemed potential threats.
These measures can only be challenged in court after they are applied, a process some affected individuals are now pursuing, with some success.
The powers were part of reinforced anti-terror legislation passed in 2017 when France was still reeling from attacks by al-Qaida and Daesh in 2015.
The attacks killed 147 people, including in Paris neighborhoods now bustling with Olympic visitors and near the Olympic stadium, which will host track and field and rugby sevens.
The anti-terror law allows the French interior minister to restrict an individual’s movements if there are "serious reasons” to believe they pose a grave security threat and have terror ties or sympathies.
The power being used to restrict people from the Olympics, known as "individual measures of administrative control and surveillance" (MICAS), allows the interior minister to enforce these restrictions without prior judicial approval.
Darmanin told reporters last week that "just under 200” of the more than 500 MICAS cases ordered this year remain in force during the Games.
These restrictions have been applied to individuals with "possible” extremist links who have served jail time, as well as others who weren’t sentenced but "represent a danger,” he said.
"We have evidence or very important suspicions that they are radicalized and could prepare an attack," Darmanin said.
Paris Chief of Police Laurent Nunez described the widespread use of these restrictions as "extremely positive."
"We must use the full range of legal and administrative tools at our disposal, which is what the interior minister asked for,” he said last week as he toured venues for Olympic table tennis, weightlifting, handball and volleyball.
"He asked us to tighten the net as we approached the Olympic Games, and that is what we did,” Nunez said.
The AP spoke to six lawyers representing about 20 people with restricted movements. Some understand the need for security measures during the Olympics, while others argue the powers are being applied too broadly.
The use of restrictions for the Olympics appears unprecedented in scope.
While over 500 people had their movements curtailed this year, and Darmanin says fewer than 200 remain restricted during the Games, this compares with 205 people subjected to MICAS restrictions in the first 26 months of the 2017 law’s implementation, according to a French Senate report from 2020.
"It’s directly connected to the Olympic Games,” said Paris attorney Margot Pugliese. She described the powers as "a horror” and "a total failure of the rule of law” because they can only be contested in court after application.
"It is a terribly dangerous tool whenever there is a repressive government,” Pugliese said.
Lawyers say some clients have no prior convictions and only tenuous links to suspected extremism. Of the lawyers interviewed by the AP, about half of their clients have immigrant backgrounds, mostly with family roots in North Africa.
Darmanin says minorities are not being singled out, and that people suspected of left- or right-wing extremism are under surveillance as well.
"What would the French people say, what would the world say, if people we suspect might carry out attacks, who are radicalized, are left free and then commit attacks?” he asked.
Paris attorney Antoine Ory has represented three people subject to MICAS restrictions ahead of the Olympics – two with no criminal records. One was born in Madagascar, and the other two are French-Algerian and French-Moroccan dual nationals.
One man, who completed a five-year sentence for terror-related offenses in 2021, including periods of semi-liberty and electronic monitoring, is now banned from leaving his northeastern suburb of Paris.
Ory claims that police intelligence used to justify restrictions for his two other clients was flimsy. He alleges that intelligence services targeted people based on outdated information, labeling them as threats just before the Games.
"It's extremely abusive," he said. "Two weeks before the Games, they come along and say, 'You're dangerous.'"
A week before the Olympic opening ceremony, Ory successfully overturned the MICAS order for his Madagascar-born client. A court southeast of Paris ruled that the Interior Ministry failed to prove the man was a terror risk and ordered the state to pay him 1,500 euros ($1,600).
A police intelligence note – seen by the AP – requesting movement restrictions and daily police check-ins for Amine from July 1 to the Sept. 8 closing of the Paralympics cited "the particularly serious threat he represents to public security and order, his adherence to radical Islam, and the specific context of the terrorist threat in the framework of the organization of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.”
The note referenced a TikTok video Amine posted on Oct. 10 of himself in front of the Eiffel Tower, lit in Israeli colors following the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas.
Wearing a Deportivo Palestino shirt and a motorcycle helmet, Amine posted photos of himself making some gestures at the monument.
In hindsight, "it wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had,” he acknowledged.
Amine said he was frustrated with the French authorities’ ban on pro-Palestinian protests. "It seemed like a lack of impartiality to me," he said.
He also posted an image of himself pointing at his shirt badge and the Star of David illuminating the tower.
The intelligence services' MICAS request described the raised finger as a sign of allegiance to Allah.
Amine says he was mimicking football players who raise fingers in celebration. "But when it's them, it's not a problem," he said.
The police note also linked Amine to an account on the video-sharing app Rave, claiming the user posted decapitation images and "worrying comments" expressing a desire to join a terror group.
The note alleged that Amine "does not hide his anti-Zionist and homophobic positions.”
Amine told the AP that the Rave account isn’t his and that he reported identity theft to the police in May.
"I am not at all anti-Zionist, homophobic, or anything like that. All those ideas are alien to me," Amine said.
The MICAS order – seen by the AP – that bars Amine from leaving his Paris suburb except for his daily police check-in warns that he risks three years in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros ($48,600) if he violates the restrictions or fails to check-in.
Stuck at home or nearby, Amine says each day feels the same. He can only watch the Paris Olympics on TV.
Despite the Olympic opening ceremony celebrating France’s freedoms, Amine feels that the promises of "liberte, egalite, fraternite" do not apply to him.
"I have neither liberty nor fraternity toward me,” he said.
