Threats and evacuations are increasing this week in high schools in the Grenoble region. In two days, at least twenty-six bomb threats were noted. Sixteen establishments on Wednesday and ten on Tuesday had to be evacuated after receiving threatening e-mails, some several times in the same day, indicated the rectorate of the Grenoble academy.
A 14-year-old boy was arrested and taken into custody on Tuesday by the gendarmes after threatening calls to his high school in the south of the city. Spotted by his telephone line, “the minor admitted the facts […] without explaining them”, explains the prosecution in a press release, adding that the teenager had been the subject of “a provisional judicial educational measure including monitoring by an educator” until his appearance before the children’s court on January 9 next.
The authors of the other alerts remain unknown at this time.
“99% is nothing… but the problem is the 1%”
Unfounded bomb threats have abounded throughout the country since September, but rarely with such intensity, which disrupts classes throughout the Grenoble metropolitan area.
“Among teachers there are both fed up with these messages which we know full well are bogus […] and taking the threat seriously” with its share of concerns, observes François Lecointe, Snes-FSU general secretary of Grenoble.
At the André Argouges high school, 1,800 students, Alexis Reynaud, a mathematics teacher, wonders after four evacuations since mid-October: “having to evacuate when we know that 99% is nothing… but the problem is the 1%.” Even the students who found it “funny the first time, are a little fed up with it,” he notes.
Shortened intervention procedures
To minimize disruption, intervention procedures have been shortened, lasting a maximum of one hour and a half. “We evacuate, we keep the students nearby”, instead of sending them home and “the removal of doubt is done all the more quickly” as the various actors have gained “reactivity” over the reports, affirms the rectorate.
In a press release released Wednesday with the Grenoble public prosecutor’s office, the prefecture recalls that “all bomb calls are the subject of systematic investigations” and that the “major or minor” perpetrators will be prosecuted. They are “being identified”.
Since October, “three bursts” of threats have been observed, “essentially emails which for the most part have the same content”, the rectorate is told, without specifying their content. The Snes-FSU union evokes “standard emails” talking about the abaya or France’s support for Israel.