EUROPE IMAGES INTERNATIONAL - M5

Synopsis

Most everyone will remember the footage in 1994 of the freeing of 170 hostages from an Air France airplane standing on the runway of Marseilles airport. Nine Gendarmes were wounded in the siege. They could just as easily have died. They were prepared to.

Determined hostage takers might one day find themselves facing the gendarmes of the GIGN Commando. The GIGN's initial role is to try and persuade the individual(s) holding hostages to give themselves up without making any victims. But should negotiation prove fruitless and all hope lost, the commandos shift into action. Their power is then limitless in that they can decide on who lives and who dies.
Most of the time the terrorist is disarmed in a fraction of a second. But if he looks too dangerous, he is shot without pity.

The men of the GIGN cannot make a mistake. The slightest false move can provoke a carnage: executed hostages or the elimination of the gendarmes themselves.

Beyond the terrorists and legal work (case objectives, operational assessment, complicated tailing, arresting delinquents, transporting especially dangerous prisoners) most of the GIGN's activities deal with managing crises, in particular the terrorist threat.

Created directly after the terrorist attacks at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, the GIGN is one direct response to this risk.

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