Mahmoud was an airport worker with no criminal record and vetted clearance from the ministry of the interior to access runways when, without warning, he was placed under a preventive three-month house arrest order ahead of the Paris Olympics last summer.
He immediately lost his clearance and the job he had held for 11 years.
“It’s surreal. I feel stunned, I can’t understand what’s happening to me,” Mahmoud told an investigation by outlet Mediapart, which reported he was at a loss to explain why authorities would identify him as someone who could potentially disrupt the Olympics.
“They’re destroying my life. I’m going to lose everything.”
Imposed without trial, the order to stay within a confined area and report daily to a police station was a use of a police power that had been introduced as an emergency measure following the Bataclan attacks 10 years ago and subsequently made a permanent part of French law.
So-called Micas
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