Five empty coffins at the foot of the Eiffel Tower to Paris: this is what the French police, with dismay and surprise, found last June 1st at the foot of the iconic Parisian frame. It was around 9.00 in the morning when two people set up the coffins on Quai Branly, surrounded by French tricolour bearing the inscription “French soldiers from Ukraine“. According to the first leaked information, the coffins contained plaster.
The investigation opened immediately, which now travels along the lines of “premeditated violence“, has already led to the arrest of three foreign citizens from Germany, Ukraine and Bulgaria. But Paris, one step away from the European elections and the Olympics, but above all following the powerful declarations of the president Emmanuel Macron, wants to see clearly. The story, in fact, could be attributable to alleged “foreign interference“. From what the sources initially reported, the driver who unloaded the perpetrators and the coffins declared that he had arrived from Bulgaria the previous evening. The other two arrested, however, were apparently intercepted at the Paris bus station, as they were preparing to take a bus to Berlin.
What, however, could have been a prank becomes a real mystery if you investigate the recent past of the van driver. Paris, in fact, in recent months has been the scene of acts of vandalism whose aim is to foment the lines of division in French society. In the night between 13 and 14 Mayunknown persons had desecrated the Shoah memorial in Paris, smearing and drawing hands with the red paint on the Wall of the Righteous. The red hands symbol has recently been adopted by pro-Palestinian activists, especially during the occupation of Science Po, with the aim of denouncing the Israeli offensive in Gaza. According to some observers, the symbolism dates back to the lynching of two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah in 2000. The suspects in that episode, now headed abroad.
Now, according to the information available from the editorial staff of TF1-LCIthe driver who transported the coffins had already been clearly identified regarding the“red hands” incident. It was the Paris Territorial Security agents who proved, thanks to scientific investigations, that they had had a previous conversation with the man in the case last May, which had triggered the fear of “foreign interference” and therefore the alleged Russian lead by the FSB.
Checked near the Tower shortly before the accident by a DOPC (Direction de l’Ordre Public et de la Circulation) patrol, the young man presented his Bulgarian passport and was let go after the usual checks. According to those documents, his name could be Georgi F., 19 years old. Shortly afterwards, thanks to a video surveillance system, the officers noticed suspicious movements on Qaui Jacques Chirac, even before he parked on the allée Jean Palhan. Then, the pursuit of the men who had left on foot immediately after leaving the coffins on the ground. The first to be questioned was the driver of the vehicle on the Pont de l’Alma: in broken French, he limited himself to telling about his mission of loading and unloading the trio and the coffins.
In police custody, he said he had met the other two only the day before. According to the police, she had asked the two to open the coffins to check that they did not contain corpses, or parts of them. Then, she would receive 120 euros for transportation.
