French police have detained 12 suspects after 145 people reported being pricked with syringes during the country’s annual street music festival this weekend.
Millions of people took to the streets across France on Saturday evening for the Fête de la Musique, with authorities reporting “unprecedented crowds” in Paris.
The feminist influencer Abrège Soeur warned online before the festival that calls had been made on social media for women to be targeted with syringes. It was not certain where such posts would have been made or by whom.
The interior ministry said 145 victims across the country had reported being stabbed with needles during outdoor music events across the country. Paris police reported 13 cases in the capital.
Officials did not say if these were cases of so-called needle spiking with date-rape drugs such as Rohypnol or GHB, used by attackers to render victims confused or unconscious and vulnerable to sexual assault.
“Some victims were taken to hospital for toxicological tests,” the ministry said.
In Paris, investigations were opened after three people, including a 15-year-old girl and an 18-year-old male, reported being stabbed in separate incidents across Paris, prosecutors said. All three reported feeling unwell.
Across France, 12 suspects have been arrested, the interior ministry said. Among them were four people in the south-western city of Angoulême suspected of having targeted about 50 victims, a police source said.
Two men were also arrested in the centre of the north-eastern city of Metz on suspicion of syringe attacks. The regional public broadcaster France 3 reported that one man had been caught with a syringe and a woman who complained of being stabbed with one had recognised the other.
The local prosecutor’s office in Metz said the alleged victims were believed to be under 18. One of the alleged suspects, a man aged 20, was previously known to police for violence.
The local public radio station Ici France reported that several young women had complained of being stabbed with syringes in Évreux and Rouen in Normandy. One woman was taken to hospital with pains in her left arm where she believed a needle had been stuck into her. In the western city of Tours, 13 women complained to fire services on duty at a music event that someone had been pricked them with a syringe.
The renewed fears of syringe attacks come as Paris prepares for its summer music festival season.
There was a wave of reports in 2022 about alleged syringe attacks against women and men in clubs, bars, music events and even theatres. The government put out messages at the time for people going out at night to be vigilant and advising them that they should go immediately to the police and also have a toxicology test if they thought they had been drugged by a syringe prick.
Some complaints were made by women during the 2022 Fête de la Musique, and over the course of the year several hundred complaints were made in cities including Nantes, Grenoble and Toulouse.
Agence France-Presse reported on a 2022 police memo stating that syringe marks were generally on the arms, buttocks or back, without victims seeing the alleged attacker.
More than 370 people were detained during this weekend’s nationwide music festival on various charges, including nearly 90 people in Paris.
Fourteen participants in the festivities were seriously injured, including a 17-year-old hospitalised after being found sitting on the street with stab wounds to the lower abdomen.
Thirteen members of law enforcement were also injured.
