Dozens of police officers from the intelligence services landed on Tuesday morning at the homes of four RTE agents. These four men, aged between 31 and 35, were still in police custody last night at the headquarters of the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI), which accuses them of acts of cybercrime and major damage to the network.
Last spring, during a day of strike, four employees of RTE, in the north of France, made small cuts in the local network. Incidents that have already occurred in the past but have never had an impact on supply.
Not to mention that the tension has risen a notch in RTE due to the risk of a power outage. Last Thursday during a day of strike, the company had already asked the unions to restart the production of the nuclear power plants to avoid tensions in the network.
Open an investigation for computer sabotage
Following a complaint from RTE, an investigation was opened on July 29 for obstruction of a data processing system, computer sabotage, fraudulent access and maintenance of an automated data processing system, as well as for the introduction, modification and deletion of data from that system. system, the prosecution said. These employees are heard at the DGSI facilities due to their status as RTE, an operator of vital importance for the functioning of the country.
In the morning hours, the CGT issued a press release to denounce “anti-terrorist services used to silence the salary demands of the agents.” The union says that the four employees, based in the North, are suspected of having “locally programmed the passage of electrical substations.”
“A desire to suppress the social movement”?
“It is, continued the CGT, a symbolic action of taking possession of the work tool, frequent during strikes, which does not affect the continuity of the electricity supply, not even the safety of people and people”.
“These are lambda employees, four maintenance technicians from the North region,” said Francis Casanova, representative of the CGT central union of RTE. According to him, “they are in police custody for 96 hours like the worst terrorists for nothing”, after a “symbolic action”. “This is crazy!” he exclaimed. Francis Casanova sees in him “a desire to repress the social movement.” He recalls that in RTE there have been actions for several months for salary increases, without the strikers winning their case.
But according to an RTE insider, these local outages in the dead of winter could create real supply problems.
A rally at the initiative of the CGT is scheduled for Thursday at 2:00 p.m. in front of the RTE headquarters in the La Défense district, in the interior of Paris.
Source: BFM TV
