Paris Attacks: Suicide Bomber Was Blocked From Entering Stade de France

A suicide bomber had a ticket to the France-Germany soccer game, but his explosive vest was found during a security check at the gate

Joshua Robinson and

Joshua Robinson

The Wall Street Journal

CANCEL

Biography Joshua Robinson
@JoshRobinson23
Joshua.Robinson@wsj.com

Inti Landauro

The Wall Street Journal

CANCEL

Biography Inti Landauro
@landauro
Inti.Landauro@dowjones.com

Updated Nov. 15, 2015 2:21 p.m. ET

269 COMMENTS

PARIS—At least one of the attackers outside France’s national soccer stadium had a ticket to the game and attempted to enter the 80,000-person venue, according to a Stade de France security guard who was on duty and French police.

The guard—who asked to be identified only by his first name, Zouheir—said the attacker was discovered wearing an explosives vest when he was frisked at the entrance to the stadium about 15 minutes into the game. France was playing an exhibition against Germany inside.

While attempting to back away from security, Zouheir said, the attacker detonated the vest, which was loaded with explosives and bolts, according to Paris prosecutor François Molins. Zouheir, who was stationed by the players’ tunnel, said he was briefed on the sequence by the security frisking team at the gate.

A police officer confirmed the sequence, adding that police suspect the attacker aimed to detonate his vest inside the stadium in order to provoke a deadly stampede.

Around three minutes later, a second person also blew himself up outside the stadium. A third suicide attacker detonated explosives at a nearby McDonald’s, MCD 0.78 % police said. One civilian died in the attacks, police said.

Paris Attacks

The account sheds light on why the suicide attacks on Stade de France failed to cause the carnage that occurred at the Bataclan concert hall and restaurants across Paris. At least 129 people died in the string of attacks Friday.

The blasts occurred during the first half of the game, sowing confusion throughout the stadium. At least two blasts were heard clearly inside the stadium, witnesses said, and on the television broadcast. Loud blasts aren’t uncommon at soccer matches on the European continent where fans sometimes set off firecrackers.

French police named a 29-year-old French national as one of the attackers who killed at least 132 people in Paris on Friday. Police are also investigating a car with firearms inside that was found on the edge of the city. Photo: Getty.

At first, Zouheir said he too thought the early blast was a firecracker. Then his walkie-talkie came alive with chatter, and he noticed that French President François Hollande—who was in attendance at the Stade de France—was being ushered out of the stadium.

“Once I saw Hollande being evacuated, I knew it wasn’t firecrackers,” said Zouheir, who could see the VIP box from his post. He added that President Hollande left after the first blast.

The game continued for the regulation 90 minutes. French soccer federation head Noel le Graet said that the information wasn’t communicated to the fans or the players in order to avoid a panic. Witnesses reported that news began to spread inside the stadium late in the second half.

ENLARGE

Police guarded the Stade de France stadium in Paris on Nov. 14, 2015, after a suicide attacker was prevented from entering France’s national soccer stadium on Friday. Photo: European Pressphoto Agency

“During the second half I started getting news alerts about attacks in Paris, but I didn’t make the connection immediately,” said Pierre Tissier, 27, who heard the explosions during the game, but said he thought it might have just been firecrackers.

A spokesman for the French soccer federation didn’t respond to requests Saturday to comment on the events.

Germany manager Joachim Löw said after the game that he feared an attack as soon as he heard the blasts.

“Of course we thought of it,” he said. “It was very loud. You could imagine what had happened.

The German team was already rattled by a bomb threat at its hotel on Friday morning, when the five-star Hotel Molitor in the tony 16th district was evacuated.

France deployed soldiers to secure strategic areas in Paris while European leaders met to address security measures in their own countries. WSJ's Shelby Holliday has the details on Europe's response to the Paris attacks.

On Friday night, the squad decided to remain at the Stade de France. “Mattresses were brought in,” the team said in a statement on its website. “Some players managed to fall asleep but a number of them stayed up to discuss what was going on.” The Germans flew home from Paris early Saturday morning.

The attacks came seven months before France is set to host the monthlong European soccer championships. Mr. Le Graet told reporters that the incident raised new concerns about security for the tournament.

Euro 2016 is set up to be played at 10 venues around the country with two in the capital region: the Parc des Princes in the western part of the city and the Stade de France in the northern suburb of St. Denis. It is the first major soccer tournament in the country since the 1998 World Cup.

A video Zouheir shot on his phone Saturday showed the gate where the suicide bomber was turned away and what appeared to be blood and viscera on the sidewalk outside the gate. On Saturday, street-cleaning crews spent several hours hosing down the area.

Security at the Stade de France gates was manned in part by a company called MCS, which handles events all over the French capital, including soccer games at Paris Saint-Germain’s home stadium of Parc des Princes.

Reached by phone, MCS President Christian Glaz said he was collecting feedback and couldn’t be sure how close any of the attackers got to entering the stadium. He said that several of his security guards were injured in the bombing, but didn’t have a specific figure. Mr. Glaz declined to give any further specifics.

—Noemie Bisserbe contributed to this article.

Write to Joshua Robinson at joshua.robinson@wsj.com and Inti Landauro at inti.landauro@wsj.com

30908
15959
Save Article

Sign In to Save

Subscribe to WSJ
Text Size

Regular

Medium

Large
Google+

Print

269 comments

Newest | Oldest

eric lorge user

As great a story it could have been (a Muslim saving Stade de France) this story has been proven to be BS.

http://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2015/11/16/attentats-du-13-novembre-4-nouvelles-intox-qui-circulent-lundi_4811107_4355770.html

Stephen King subscriber

@eric lorge How true. But I think it's just a matter of time before it does become a main stream story of interest.

RedBearded T useraccountSuspended

Why didn't you mention that Zouheir is a Muslim?

EDWARD MORGAN subscriber

Kudos to the security team at Stade de France. I would bet they saved hundreds of lives, maybe thousands. Well played.

Nevdeep Gill subscriber

Maybe we can all start by being courteous to one another in our remarks and responses on public forums.

julian wallace user

And forgetting the financial aspect of a relationship with Arabic countries in the vicinity like Saudi Arabia and forcing them to get involved and act instead of sitting on the side lines !

Begelovick Weirfeld subscriber

@julian wallace Saudi Arabia is indeed involved...in financing the deadly terrorists.

Yeah the double standards are astounding and must change.

Joshua Wedekind subscriber

Woah. All the people in here blaming Bush had me thinking I must have time traveled back 7 years. You guys really need to read a newspaper. Obama has been President for 7 YEARS.

Also, read a history book. Islamic extremists have been blowing up civilians since before Bush was born.

@Joshua Wedekind It's a really tough time for liberals as the cognitive dissonance created by their utter deadly incompetence speaks so loudly without having to say a single word.

The best thing right now is for people to take great care in going to public places, ensure that your finances are in order, your family is safe, and just get out of the way while the leftists burn themselves out in total failure. It has to happen at some point so we might as well just let them do it sooner than later.

Paul Hogan subscriber

@Julie Keene @Joshua Wedekind So I guess that you did not believe Obama when he said:

"“It’s harder to end a war than begin one,” Obama said at Fort Bragg. “Indeed, everything that American troops have done in Iraq--all the fighting and all the dying, the bleeding and the building, and the training and the partnering--all of it has led to this moment of success. Now, Iraq is not a perfect place. It has many challenges ahead. But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people. We’re building a new partnership between our nations. And we are ending a war not with a final battle, but with a final march toward home. This is an extraordinary achievement, nearly nine years in the making.”"

Paul Cavallo subscriber

@Joshua Wedekind

Granted, but the two idiots, Bush and Cheney, laid the ground-work for the next idiot to prove his incompetence too. So it goes with American foreign policy as directed by the NSC. Pretty soon the fan is going to burn out and the wall is going to be all brown, then what?

ROSS HANAHAN subscriber

@Paul Hogan @Julie Keene @Joshua Wedekind Bush did not start the war, he finally started fighting back.

Preserve a "balance" in the middle--are you kidding me?--that's the same manufactured rhetoric Obama uses, which seems so logical and wonderfully poetic at the moment it falls on the desperate ears of his loyal subjects--his words are so well thought out, not wild cowboy style, righ? They were all just growing beautiful gardens of poppy flowers before we stirred up the nest. No, we needed a beachhead in the heart of the Middle East after 911 (remember that?), just like we've had in Europe since WWII.

We had a beachhead in Iraq--then Obama cashed it in for his first campaign so he could compete with Hillary's war chest. Afghanistan turned out to be somewhat of a military/political distraction--it's a CIA/Special Ops target.

Rob Minford subscriber

@Gaurang Joshi @Julie Keene @Steven Greene There's a lovely irony in calling someone a fool but misspelling the word.

Gaurang Joshi subscriber

@Julie Keene @Steven Greene When you run out of excuses for obungler vigrously defending the "Arab Spring", you bring out the the tried and true demon rat/liberal/progressive playbook of forgetting politics and think long and hard. If after 7 years, your wondrous king cannot do anything, he needs to be judged for what he is - a total, abject, failure and a fuul.

Julie Keene subscriber

I believe the point is that overthrowing Sadaam on the pretext of 9-11 destroyed a very fragile balance of power between Sunni and Shia, creating a domino effect that led to ISIS and to the civil war in Syria.

@Steven Greene

I said toppling Saddam destroyed the balance of power between Shia and Sunni--between Iraq and Iran. I was living in the region during the onset of the Iraq-Iran war, and understand this has been going on for centuries. That's why that tenuous peace, or cease-fire more accurately, was so important to maintain. I said nothing further. Let's not use this to play politics, except insofar as we think long and hard about whom to elect as our next CIC.

@Paul Cavallo @Joshua Wedekind

Don't forget Rummy. After all, the New American Century was he and Cheney's stillborn child.

(Bush by contrast, was just a drooling bystander, in my opinion).

Just imagine how positively quaint it would be if our biggest concern today was an aging Saddam Hussain and his "stockpile" of chemical weapons.

Seven years on, and the negative repercussions for the Bush/Cheney misadventures are no where NEAR to being played out.

Steven Greene subscriber

Sunni and Shia have been fighting for centuries. Want to blame Bush? I guess he's also responsible for the Arab Spring, huh? And how about Syria - is that disaster Bush's fault too? Stop it.

Anna Kaikou user

Where and the hell are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to explain themselves, now that their failed war has turned what was a perfectly stable region into a nest for extremists?

We need to fix this problem, but we also need to hold George W. Bush and his administration responsible for their incompetence!

MANUEL J CORREA subscriber

@Anna Kaikou You want to go back in time, how about Clinton who several times declined to take Bin Laden when he was offered. A 50 cent bullet could have prevented 9/11. FYI, Iraq was a stable place when Bush left office, it was Obama who did nothing while ISIS marched, against the advice of our military experts.

JAMES MATLOCK subscriber

"Perfectly stable"?

The internal slaughter of the Kurds and Marsh Shi'ites, the provocations against the enforcers of the no-fly zone, the constant head-gaming of the UN weapons inspectors. There were a reported six coup attempts against Saddam put down with a beastial cruelty impossible for a normal mind to comprehend

You've got to be kidding.

Ann Holmes subscriber

Anna, You need to fight terror with a trained military. But no, all of you liberals to go forward with no wars. You only get Peace through strength. But my beloved France and my own USA, under Obama, have been nothing but appeasers, and appeasement will get us all killed

@Anna Kaikou

Their sins were not so much incompetence, (although the errors were numerous) so much as Deceit and Hubris.

They gambled, we lost.

Dan Coronado subscriber

@Anna Kaikou is a complete idiot....living in the past, and unable to deal with the current failures of our feckless potus and his "no answers" team.

It is quite clear by the hard core leftists posting here that they cannot be counted on to do what is required to address the problem. While they dawdle and fondly reminisce about George Bush, people are dying while they are in charge. The best bet at this point is to take care of your own family, be safe in public places, take financial measures and personal safety measures, and hunker down until enough people realize the folly here. Most importantly don't forget to vote in 2016.

Samuel Weir user

@Begelovick Weirfeld : "Most importantly don't forget to vote in 2016."

That brings up the question: I thought you conservatives don't like "narcissists". If that's the case, then why do you have two of the biggest narcissists ever as the front two leading candidates for the Republican nomination? Maybe you just like conservative narcissists?

James French subscriber

@Samuel Weir

Need to spend more time with your dictionary, Sam! If you remember the ancient tale of Narcissus, he became so enamored by the sight of his own image, that he became transfixed by the image and could no longer move, or eat, or interact with the world.

In short, a Narcissist withdraws into his shell, and cannot get anything done in the world. A narcissist never leads, never calls up people, never negotiates, and if he is ever confronted with criticism, a narcissist reacts negatively and violently, since it counteracts his own (delusional) self image. I think we all know who we are talking about here...

Interestingly, the whole world bought into this image, awarding him the Seinfeld Nobel Peace Prize by accepting an application that arrived in Oslo even before he took office!

Now the word you need to look up and NOT conflate, is "EGO". Our guys have Ego, but with ego, you not only can work and do things in the world, but you are often wildly successful to boot!

Bill Lee subscriber

@Begelovick Weirfeld very interesting that conservatives treat terrorism as part of a sports game with conservatives vs liberals even though liberals don't see this as a game. Interesting that conservatives force entities like the non partisan Fed Reserve whom they don't have a clue on the simple mechanism onto this other team and force an entity like the military into their own team even though conservatives backstabbed them by laying off plenty and closed bases while always bumping up the defense budget to fund rich defense corporation, almost all led by people with no personal military experience.

I'll tell you what: Do something about terrorism and not waste time making comparisons of sports teams.

@Begelovick Weirfeld

Psst. Psst. Hey Weirfeld, didn't you hear?? Republicans now control BOTH branches of Congress!

ARATHI SAMUEL subscriber

Gun control for the Palestinians!

ALAN KAUFMAN subscriber

A loud thank you to Edward Snowden for teaching the killers that they should find more discreet and untraceable means of communication to enable them to escape eavesdropping and murder all those innocents.

@ALAN KAUFMAN

Right. Because before Snowden, nobody had any idea they were being spied on. Please.

John OGrady user

Let's give credit to those security guards who were paying attention and prevented these individuals from getting in and cranking up the body count to well over 200. Security, the forgotten ones.

Paul Norwood subscriber

Guess what the west is going to do about the reservoir of Jihadists in their respective countries. NOTHING.

What needs to be done is to kick anyone out who supports their religion's values over their country's values. (i.e. free speech).

Charlie Mongoho subscriber

What country values?

Bill Letson subscriber

@Paul Norwood I thought one of our country's values was freedom of religion.

Timothy Heitman subscriber

@Paul Norwood I'm thinking that all those Kim Davis supporters would be outraged when she was deported for supporting her religious values over her country's values.

Kyle Berndt userprofilePrivate

@Paul Norwood "What needs to be done is to kick anyone out who supports their religion's values over their country's values. (i.e. free speech)."

I don't think you know what free speech is, as it's not free speech when you can be sanctioned for what you support. Maintaining a free society is hard and you can't thought-police people based on what they do or don't support, else you are not a free society. We must suffer the expression of backwards ideas (even as we reject them), just as we are suffering your backwards beliefs right now.

Assimilate or....

Interestingly, no other news source in the French media is reporting this 'Zouheir' story.

Quite the opposite; the mystery seems to be why they blew themselves up in the parking lot with no one around. Hmmm...

Tim Downey subscriber

Good thing the French security guards are more competent than our TSA imbeciles.

hank grabois user

@Tim Downey

Apparently the jihadist said during patdown: (translated from French)"Cut it out, you're tickling my explosive vest!"

@Tim Downey :"Good thing the French security guards are more competent than our TSA imbeciles."

LOL! I remember being in France on a business trip many years ago before 9/11 and the TSA. My colleagues and I were impressed when we saw that the security checkpoints were manned by the French national police, as opposed to the low-paid private security personnel that we had at US airports at the time. But then we noticed that the French national police on duty were just smoking and yakking with each other while ignoring the series of X-Ray images that were popping on their monitors.

@Tim Downey No kidding! The many bombs that have been placed on aircraft in the US and the way those Islamist nut jobs have been able to hijack so many aircraft in the US is horrifying, and goes to show how incompetent TSA is.

gardner morris subscriber

Do you think Zouhier would be interested in a job as US Secretary of State or maybe head of the US Border Patrol?

Gayle Loveland subscriber

@gardner: ---Why would he? Read the article again: "Zouhier" didn't "stop" (or frisk) Jack Diddely. Zouhier's "GUARDS" did (he was merely their supervisor who was "briefed" on what had happened...Heck, the man couldn't even be bothered to know how MANY of his guards were injured, or even what their injuries were)...

JAMES MARION subscriber

Stopping the suicide jihadists from entering the stadium isn't such a great accomplishment. Stopping them at the border is what needs to be done.

The policy of having the citizens of the European Union waltz to and from countries like we in the US transverse between states is asking for disaster.

Tom Williams subscriber

Could it be merely coincidental that the French President was at the game, and this is the only site that had enough security to stop the terrorists from getting in?