Didier Lallement, the head of police in Paris, has apologized for tear-gassing fans waiting to enter the Champions League final at the Stade de France between Liverpool and Real Madrid.
He apologized for authorizing the deployment of tear gas in the French Senate on Thursday, but believed he had no other choice under the circumstances.
Lallement said: “It is obviously a failure. It was a failure because people were pushed around and attacked. It was a failure because the image of the country was undermined.”
He provided no evidence for his widely discredited claim that up to 40,000 supporters without tickets or with fake tickets attempted to enter the stadium.
“The figure has no scientific virtue but it came from feedback from police and public transport officials,” Lallement added. “Maybe I was wrong, but it was constructed from all the information harvested.
“Whether there are 30,000 or 40,000 people, it doesn’t change anything. What matters is that there were people, in large numbers, likely to disrupt the proper organization of the filtering. But that we count them precisely to within 5000, it doesn’t change much.”
Liverpool officials will visit the head of UEFA’s inquiry of incidents during the Champions League final in an attempt to reassure themselves that the process would be totally impartial, according to police chief Lallement.
Dr Tiago Brandao Rodrigues, a Portuguese politician, was appointed by European football’s governing body to conduct an investigation into the circumstances that resulted in thousands of fans being locked out of the Stade de France and some being tear-gassed by police prior to Real Madrid’s 1-0 victory.