The loss of CCTV footage from the Stade de France on the evening of the Champions League final raises several questions. In the absence of a judicial requisition, these were deleted after seven days. But for the moment, the complaints relate only to acts committed outside the enclosure. The images of the stadium forecourt are still available.
A confession that raises several questions. During the hearing before the Senate of four members of the French Football Federation (FFF), Erwan Le Prévost, the federation’s director of institutional and international relations, admitted that the video surveillance images of the evening at the Stade de France in the last Champions League final have been removed.
As a reminder, many incidents took place before this poster between Real Madrid and Liverpool (1-0). The kick-off had even been delayed. “The images are available for seven days. They are then automatically destroyed. We should have had a requisition to provide them to the different populations. For having been at the security headquarters all day with Didier [Pinteaux, responsable sécurité de la FFF]the images are extremely violent”, declared Erwan Le Prévost during his hearing this Thursday, several days after those of the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, and the Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra.
The images of the forecourt still available for justice
The legal retention of video surveillance images is a maximum of one month. Beyond that, it is illegal in France. On the other hand, the operator who manages the enclosure can reduce this period to 7, 14 or 21 days as he wishes. The Stade de France has a rule of keeping them seven days before deleting them, for the 220 cameras.
Outside the perimeter of the Stade de France, however, other cameras are installed and are under the responsibility of either the town hall of Saint-Denis or the police. The videos of the cameras managed by the public authorities are kept for 30 days, which is the maximum period. The images of these videos are therefore still available to the courts, which must soon deal with several complaints filed recently. The RATP keeps its tapes for 72 hours before destruction.
It seems curious, however, that the images inside the Stade de France were not the subject of a request from the FFF, given the events, to keep them. She was entitled to do so. These images could indeed have been the subject of a judicial requisition. But it is not because we speak of “judicial” requisition that the order to seize necessarily returns to the prosecution. The OPJ, Judicial Police Officers, can do it themselves.
Are the Stade de France videos also necessarily useful in the ongoing procedures? Not necessarily. Because in the open investigations, the complaints lodged for the moment do not concern any acts committed within the enclosure of the stadium. All the offenses were committed outside the Stade dde France. And there, the images still exist.