Music Festival: the note which warns of the risk of a new “episode of urban violence”

The 45th edition of the music festival promises to be hot next Sunday, and the peak of the heatwave which will hit France will not be the only reason. In a note to the prefects addressed on June 15 and brought to the attention of Le Figaro, the Minister of the Interior sounded the alarm by writing that the event could be “conducive to an episode of urban violence, particularly at the end of the evening”. “Moreover, the risk of overflow could be amplified in the context of the football matches of the 2002 FIFA World Cup6â€adds Laurent Nuñez, who has a bitter memory of the scenes of riots which followed the European coronation of PSG on May 30. Despite the deployment of 22,000 police officers and gendarmes, including 8,000 in Paris, gangs of thugs had passed through to action, taking the police to task. The night ended with the heavy toll of one death and one person in absolute emergency, 219 people injured and 780 arrested.