French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has threatened to file a defamation lawsuit over a police officer’s accusations that she was pressured to change a report into security at the Nice fireworks display during the Bastille Day terror attack, AFP reports.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told France 2 television he would counter the “villainous campaign” criticizing his handling of the Nice attacks “blow for blow.”
The head of Nice’s video surveillance network, Sandra Bertin, had accused the interior ministry of interfering with her report into the attacks and claimed she had been “literally harassed the entire time of writing.”
Bertin told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper she had been pressured to highlight the presence of local police at the Bastille Day fireworks event and report that national police were present at two points.
“The national police were perhaps there, but I couldn’t see them on the video,” Bertin said. She claimed she was told “to put in the specific positions of the national police, which I had not seen on the screen.”
During a subsequent press conference, Bertin’s lawyer, Adrien Verrier, said that “if indeed the facts are proven, they qualify as a criminal offense.”
Cazeneuve’s office on Sunday denied the claim he had sent a representative to the local Nice police.
The fallout from the terror attack in Nice on Bastille Day has been significant.
Jean-Marc Falcone, the head of the national police, called Sunday for “the manipulations attacking the national police, its leaders and its minister” to stop.
The call comes after local authorities slammed a request by prosecutors that security footage of the attack be erased to ensure the video would not be leaked. In addition, Christian Estrosi, the former Nice mayor who now heads the regional administration, claimed the French government had lied about the number of police and soldiers deployed during the fireworks display.