A delicious tale from this morning’s Telegraph:
French secret service agents tasked with protecting President Francois Hollande “forgot to pack their guns” while on a recent trip to a climate conference in Brazil, it was reported on Wednesday. In a highly embarrassing Inspector Clouseau-style blunder, the presidential guards from the elite GSPR unit only realised the guns were absent upon arrival at Rio de Janeiro Airport.
They usually travel with a secured briefcase containing an array of firearms. But when they sought to present the weapons to customs officials, they were nowhere to be seen. “They searched the (presidential) Airbus with a fine tooth comb, to no avail,” according to French satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné. It later transpired the guns had been left at the Elysée Palace in Paris.
This meant that for the duration of the trip, the bodyguards’ only means of protecting the French president were their “bare hands”, Le Canard reported. “In police memory, it’s a first,” one elite officer was cited as saying.
