France warned on Friday night that the Paris Olympic Games were threatened with further chaos after its high-speed rail network was crippled by sabotage attacks suspected to have been carried out by hard-Left agitators.

Suspicion also fell on Russia after critical cables sustained “massive” damage in “co-ordinated” pre-dawn assaults on three locations on Friday, hours before the Paris Olympic Games opening ceremony.

It came after months of warnings about Kremlin plots to sabotage the Games, and the rising threat from radical Leftist groups angered by Emmanuel Macron’s snap election.

Patrice Vergriete, the French transport minister, said after the sabotage that France was “preparing” for more attacks on its networks.

He said: “Today we are on alert, so obviously we have mobilised all security forces, as well as drones, so today we have greatly increased our vigilance.”

One French intelligence source told the AFP news agency that the hard-Left was believed to be behind the attacks. US media also said local officials were investigating anarchists or extreme Leftist groups, although they cautioned that the “initial assessment” was only preliminary.

There was no official comment from the French authorities.

Gerald Darmanin, the French interior minister, revealed that four more attack plans targeting the Olympics had been foiled in the past few weeks by his services. He added that the threat of terrorism remained “high”.

Friday’s attacks threatened to overshadow the opening ceremony held on the River Seine last night as heavy rain fell on the 7,500 athletes, 300,000 spectators and an audience of VIPs.

The chaos on the railways was set to affect some 800,000 passengers throughout this weekend, including a quarter of a million on Friday, authorities said.

Two trains carrying athletes were also affected on Friday, with some at risk of missing the opening ceremony and the start of their sports.

Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, the French sports minister, said that the impact on the transportation of the delegations and “the athletes this weekend” was being assessed.

Sir Keir Starmer was also caught up in the chaos. He had to change his travel plans, with a Downing Street spokesman saying that the Prime Minister was meant to travel on the Eurostar to Paris but flew to France instead because of the disruption.

Meanwhile, thousands of British travellers were stranded in St Pancras station in London after one in four Eurostar trains were cancelled as a result of the sabotage in France.

Some travellers told The Telegraph that they had tickets to the opening ceremony, while others were unable to travel to the Games where they were supposed to be volunteering.

‘This is an attempt to destabilise France’

Paris prosecutors said an investigation had been launched into charges of “damaging property likely to harm the fundamental interests of the nation”, among others.

Valérie Pécresse, the Paris regional council head, said: “Clearly this attack is not a coincidence. This attack is an attempt to destabilise France.”

Gabriel Attal, the French prime minister, said saboteurs “knew where to hit”, had “knowledge of the network” and had hit “key points”.

Some officials pointed the finger at a Russian plot. The attacks followed weeks of warnings from French government officials that Russia might try to sabotage the Games.

This week, a Russian reality TV “bachelor” turned Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef was unmasked as an alleged spy plotting to sabotage the Paris Olympics. Kirill Gryaznov, 40, arrested on Sunday in Paris, has been linked to Russia’s FSB security service.

In a phone call, intercepted by French officers, he was recorded saying: “The French are going to have an opening ceremony like there has never been before.”

He was charged with sharing “intelligence with a foreign power with a view to provoking hostilities in France”.

Israel said that Iran was responsible, with Israel Katz, its foreign minister, writing that the attack was “planned and executed under the influence of Iran’s axis of evil and radical Islam”.

A powerful drug lord nicknamed The Professor who allegedly smuggled billions of pounds worth of cocaine from Latin America to Europe in yachts across the Atlantic is on the run.

The eccentric criminal mastermind is being sought by Spanish and British police who said they smashed the world’s largest cocaine smuggling sailboat operation.

“Damon Hill” and “Jeremy Clarkson” were used as nicknames by gang members who made so much money, they “decorated” a lavatory with piles of €50 notes.

It was reported guns were encrusted with diamonds; a Ferrari featured the insignia of the Colombian police and homes were filled with gold busts of gang leaders.

One of the alleged gang members was Conor Cowan, 30, a fisherman from the Isle of Lewis, The Telegraph can reveal.

Mr Cowan was arrested by the French navy, which seized 1.2 tons of cocaine with a street value of £96 million when sailors boarded a Spanish-registered yacht 1,200 miles east of Martinique in the Caribbean in December.

The Professor, who was born in Iran but has Norwegian nationality, oversaw the drugs empire from a luxury villa in Denia on Spain’s Costa Blanca.

To hide his real vocation, the 50-year-old pretended to teach Norwegian to locals but never gave a class, Spanish police said.

Over 20 years, he won the confidence of the Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, police said, and worked with a British crime group based in Marbella to ship drugs in yachts from Latin America to Spain and on to the UK.

His British partners ran a fleet of yachts based in southern Spain but The Professor made the final decision when shipments would be made.

Before each yacht sailed, The Professor consulted a santero, a witch doctor derived from Latin American and African religion.

In December, the mystic’s judgment proved disastrously wrong when police boarded the yacht in the Caribbean.

Ten Britons were among 52 people arrested by the end of a three-year international operation in June. 

But The Professor fled from Spain a few days before the arrests and was still at large, police said.

Mr Cowan, who is facing charges for alleged drug smuggling in Spain and is awaiting trial, was confirmed as the British skipper was arrested in December, police sources said.

Described as a “mild-mannered boy” by those who knew him in Lewis, he would regularly post images on social media of sea views around the Western Isles, a springer spaniel called Luna and show off hauls of prawns.

“He was raised by granny and was really devoted to her until she passed away,” one person who knows Mr Cowan said.

“He was a really nice, decent boy, very polite. He barely drank and wasn’t much of a partier, he just went fishing.

“It’s a real shock. He’s the last person you would have expected to have become mixed up in something like this.”

Mr Cowan comes from a seafaring family, a decade ago posting a grainy black and white picture to his Instagram account of his grandfather on an expedition to South Georgia in the Southern Atlantic.

He claimed his ancestor was the first to bring penguins back to Britain.

Locals admitted there had been widespread speculation within the tight-knit community about how a Lewis native, whose birth was registered in Stornoway in 1994, had allegedly found himself at the centre of a major international drug smuggling ring.

“There was a lot of talk about it when he was arrested,” another islander said.

The Spanish detective who led the operation told The Telegraph: “The operation is a success of international co-operation because we have managed to dismantle the biggest drug sailing fleet in the world.

“This gang must have transported billions of pounds worth of cocaine over the years. We can never know how much. Each sailing boat carried about €20 million (£17 million) in cocaine.”

The officer, who did not want to be identified for security reasons, said: “The Professor deeply believed in the witch doctor and he made a decision on each embarkation based on what they said.”

The British men organised the fleet of yachts and were “top tier” members of the gang, the Spanish officer said.

The British women occupied a lower level, allegedly working as treasurers to launder drug money in Marbella and beyond. They bought a restaurant and a hotel in the upmarket resort.

The skipper of the yacht boarded in the Caribbean was a 30-year-old man from Stornoway.

Three of the women were from Boston, Lincs, aged 19, 38 and 28, who were living in Marbella when they were arrested.

A 54-year-old woman from Chelmsford, Essex, and a 49-year-old woman from Nottingham were also detained along with a 63-year-old man from East Yorkshire and a 24-year-old British man.

A 37-year-old man from Bracknell, Berks, who was living in Portugal and a 34-year-old Scottish man was detained.

All are being held in Spain pending trial. None have been charged.

Spanish police released a video showing officers raiding the sumptuous villa in Marbella, which they say is owned by one of the Britons arrested in the operation.

Inside, police found a lavatory which was covered with piles of €50 notes as the drug dealers did not know what to do with the loot.

In 2020, intelligence from the National Crime Agency identified a British crime group based in Spain who were trafficking cocaine across the Atlantic.

Yachts sailed from Valencia, Malaga and Alicante to Brazil, Colombia, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Lucia, Barbados and Panama. They made the return journey laden with cocaine

Neil Keeping, National Crime Agency regional manager in Spain, said: “This Spanish-led international operation has dismantled a major drug trafficking crime group and resulted in the arrests of 10 British nationals.

“A portion of the class A drugs seized would have undoubtedly been destined for the UK where its supply at street levels fuels violence and exploitation and brings misery to our communities.”

More than 15 Norwegians including a “reconverted bank robber” were held as part of the police operation.

Around 1.5 tons of cocaine in all, eight boats, 36 vehicles and more than 85 mobile phones were seized.

French intelligence sources hinted that the massive sabotage attack on rail lines leading to Paris on Friday may have been the work of Left-wing radicals.

But with no confirmed suspects, Russia was also blamed as suspicions swirled that Vladimir Putin has been yearning for a chance to humiliate Emmanuel Macron.

There are reasons to believe either may be correct.

As of Friday afternoon, with theories coming from multiple quarters and little to no hard evidence, it remained unclear who exactly the perpetrators were.

The French authorities have laid on a large, high-tech security regime to defend the Olympics, with Reaper drones in the skies and AI-powered cameras on the ground to watch for suspicious activity.

But Friday’s attack suggests they paid far less attention to key rail routes, which were sabotaged by old-fashioned arson methods rather than cyber-attacks.

The perpetrators had a good working knowledge of the railway and were most likely seeking to cause maximum disruption while avoiding any loss of human life.

There have been five incidents of damage to the SNCF rail network, all of them targeting electronic or signalling boxes. French media reports said bundles of cables in the network had been burned or severed.

The result was around 50 per cent of the trains in the north and east of France were not running as of Friday morning, while the high-speed TVG network was also paralysed. The disruption is expected to last throughout the weekend.

The attacks came in the early hours, when no trains were running on the high-speed network, and were carried out in such a way that control centres would have become immediately aware of the damage and shut down the system.

Had the perpetrators struck during the morning rush and employed acts of sabotage that could not have been so easily detected remotely – such as parking vehicles across the line – the outcome might have been very different.

France has not yet accused any group or state over the sabotage, but many will immediately point the finger at Moscow. Other possible suspects include terrorism groups, Left-wing radicals or environmental activists.

The head of SNCF has described the arsonists as a “band of lunatics” but gave no clues as to their identity. Gabriel Attal, the French prime minister, said the attacks were carried out in a “prepared and co-ordinated manner”, as he vowed to “find and punish” the saboteurs.

“We are obviously in a situation of conflict with Russia, and Russia is obviously not going to do anything, and that’s an understatement, to help these Olympic Games be a success,” suggested Jean de Gliniasty, the former French ambassador to Moscow, in an interview with French broadcaster LCI.

In April, Mr Macron, the French president, said he had “no doubt whatsoever, including in terms of information,” that Russian leaders were planning to disrupt or damage the Games.

Around the same time, an aide to Mr Macron warned: “There is a hardening from Russia, which we have been seeing for several months.”

A security source said on Friday that a “smoking gun” had not yet been discovered to establish whether the railway sabotage was the result of a Russian hybrid attack.

They added: “We do assess overall that Russian, and their supporters’, activity is rising.

“This will see an increase in both the severity and frequency of incidents in the ‘grey zone’, designed to disrupt and deter the supporters of Ukraine.”

However, a French intelligence source told AFP news agency that the sabotage was similar to previous incidents involving the far-Left. “The modus operandi – arson attacks on installations – resembles that used by the ultra-Left in the past,” the source said.

Israel, meanwhile, has blamed Iran, its arch nemesis in the Middle East, which continues to fund and support Hamas, as well as the Lebanese group Hezbollah.

“The sabotage of railway infrastructure across France ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympics was planned and executed under the influence of Iran’s axis of evil and radical Islam,” said Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister.

“Based on information held by Israel, Iranians are planning terrorist attacks against the Israeli delegation and all Olympic participants. Increased preventive measures must be taken to thwart their plot,” he added.

France’s diplomatic and military support for Ukraine has put it in the crosshairs of a new Russian campaign against Europe known as “hybrid warfare,” which involves sabotage, arson, cyber-attacks and other attempts to destabilise Western democracy.

And there is already a precedent for Russia launching arson attacks on businesses and infrastructure in Europe.

In May, when a mysterious fire broke out at the Diehl arms factory in Berlin, German investigators initially ruled it an accident – despite the Diehl group being part of the supply chain that supports Ukrainian forces with weapons.

They have since received intelligence from a Nato member state which strongly suggests it was actually a Russian sabotage attack.

In the previous month, pro-Russian arsonists targeted a business with commercial links to Ukraine in east London. The British Government expelled Russia’s defence attache in response to the attack.

Free speech on campus is “in peril”, Labour was warned on Friday after it announced it would shelve a law to tackle cancel culture at universities.

Bridget Phillipson revealed she has pulled the plug on the law designed to protect academics from being no-platformed or forced out over their views.

The Education Secretary will now consider repealing the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 just days before it was due to come into force.

Experts warned the move could leave academics unprotected against cancel culture on campus, with a new complaints scheme for those who have been “no-platformed” expected to be axed.

Akua Reindorf, a barrister and Equality and Human Rights commissioner, said she was shocked by the move. “The Act was not perfect, but it’s quite evident that free speech and academic freedom are in peril in universities,” she said.

“I’m surprised and shocked that Bridget Phillipson has announced that the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 won’t come into force on 1 August and may be repealed.”

Under the flagship Tory policy, universities, colleges and student unions would have been required to actively promote free speech on campus.

Those found to have breached academics’ right to free speech would face sanctions by the universities regulator and possible fines.

Academics and students would also be able to seek compensation through the courts if they suffered financial loss after being expelled, dismissed or demoted. The protections would cover any visiting speakers whose invitations were rescinded following student protests.

It was introduced after a series of rows over the so-called cancellation of academics and students over their views. They include Dr Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor, who resigned from Sussex University in 2021 after what she described as a witch-hunt over her views on transgender issues.

Labour’s decision to pause and potentially repeal the scheme will be seen as a major watering down of free speech protections ushered in by the previous government.

Tom Tugendhat, one of the frontrunners in the Tory leadership race, told The Telegraph that the Government had “caved into” universities that appear “unable to stand up for freedom of expression”.

“Freedom of speech is sacrosanct. If we can’t challenge each other we can’t learn or progress as a society,” he said.

“This was a good Bill, passed by the last Parliament to tackle a real issue on our university campuses. It’s disgraceful that Labour has paused it with no democratic debate or accountability. They’ve caved into universities who have shown themselves unwilling, or unable, to stand up for freedom of expression.”

James Cleverly, another Tory leadership contender, said: “Free speech is a core British value, at the heart of our liberal and democratic society.

“Education must be free from cancel culture. Our freedoms are under threat under Labour.”

The law was due to come into force next week and would have handed new powers to Prof Arif Ahmed, who was appointed the Government’s first-ever “free speech tsar” in 2023.

The former Cambridge philosophy professor has spent the past year designing a new complaints scheme to implement the laws. It would have allowed him to take submissions from academics who have been cancelled over their personal beliefs.

However, Prof Ahmed’s position now faces serious uncertainty amid growing expectations the entire scheme will be scrapped. The Telegraph understands he could be moved to another position within the Office for Students (OfS), the higher education regulator, if he does not resign outright.

In a statement announcing her decision to shelve the Act on Friday, the Education Secretary said that “for too long, universities have been a political battlefield”.

“We are absolutely committed to freedom of speech and academic freedom, but the Free Speech Act introduced last year is not fit for purpose and risked imposing serious burdens on our world-class universities,” she said.

The Telegraph understands Labour also had concerns the free speech laws could leave universities open to being sued at a time when many face crippling cost pressures.

Ministers are understood to be holding cross-government crisis talks about the future of several universities amid fears that some could be pushed under in the coming months.

About 40 per cent of universities in England are expected to run budget deficits this year, with many top institutions thought to be exploring possible mergers to rescue their peers.

The Russell Group of elite institutions welcomed Labour’s decision to pause the legislation, noting that universities already had a legal duty to protect free speech and that extra laws could create unnecessary paperwork.

“Matters relating to freedom of speech can be complex, particularly when cases interact with other legal duties such as equality law. It’s right that the Government has decided to take more time to consider its options,” the group said.

Labour also claimed the intervention was to protect “vulnerable groups and Jewish students”, and to save universities from “costly legal action”.

Phil Rosenberg, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said that although “well-intentioned”, the Act “risked enabling anti-Semitic extremists to access university campuses by severely impacting the ability of universities to block their presence”.

Whitehall sources also suggested the free speech laws would have unintentionally created protections for alleged hate speech on campus. They claimed the legislation may have built a platform for people like Tommy Robinson, the founder of the English Defence League, David Irving, a prominent Holocaust denier, and Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch far-Right Freedom party who was sworn into government earlier this month.

Prof Ahmed, who has always insisted the scheme would only protect freedom of speech under the law, is likely to resist the claims. A number of existing UK laws already outlaw hate speech, including language that incites “racial and religious hatred”, “hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation” and speech that “encourages terrorism”.

However, the Free Speech Union, led by former journalist Toby Young, has vowed to launch legal action against the Government.

“There is a free speech crisis in our universities, as has been widely acknowledged, and this Act, which enjoyed cross-party support, was designed to remedy that,” it said in a statement

“The Government’s attack on the Freedom of Speech Act is shocking. If Labour refuses to commence legislation passed in the last parliament, the Free Speech Union will bring judicial review proceedings.”

A No 10 spokesman said the decision to pause the legislation had been taken “in response to concerns that have been raised in the university sector”.

Asked about criticism of the move as a threat to free speech on campuses, she replied: “I disagree with that characterisation. It’s right to listen to concerns and to take stock.”

A Metropolitan Police officer has admitted to stealing money from a man who died after collapsing.

Pc Craig Carter, of Harlow, Essex, stole around £115 from Claudio Gaetani in September 2022.

Wearing a dark suit, the 51-year-old appeared at Wood Green Crown Court on Friday to plead guilty to the charge, which stated he “took for his own use money from a wallet received by him in evidence in relation to a sudden death”.

Judge Daniel Fugallo said: “I have to make absolutely clear that an immediate custodial sentence seems the likely outcome in this case.”

The judge granted Carter unconditional bail ahead of his sentencing at the same court on Sept 13.

The judge stipulated: “Neither the ordering of the report nor the fact that I am granting you bail should be taken as any indication to the type of sentence you will receive.”

Carter, who works for the Met’s North Area Command Unit, which covers Enfield and Haringey, is suspended from duty.

‘Woefully short’

Tetteh Turkson, from the Crown Prosecution Service, said Carter fell “woefully short” of the public’s expectations of a police officer.

He added: “The fact Carter thought he could freely steal from a victim who had sadly passed away is not only disturbing, but deeply disrespectful to the victim’s family. Our thoughts remain with them at this time.

“After collaborative work from the CPS and Metropolitan Police Service, Carter was left with no option but to plead guilty and face the consequences of his actions.”

Mr Gaetani, a filmmaker and actor from Italy, died on Sep 8 2022 after suffering a heart attack during the rush hour commute while cycling to meet friends.

Det Supt Marco Bardetti said the evidence against Carter “could not be denied”.

“In September 2022, Pc Carter was responsible for looking after a man who had sadly died in the street, as well as taking responsibility for his personal possessions,” he added.

“A family, struggling to come to terms with the death of a loved one, should not be put in a position where they have to make a complaint against an officer, suspecting that they have taken money.

“The Met is not an organisation that will tolerate such behaviour.”