National Gendarmerie Intervention Group - History

History

After the Munich massacre during the Olympic Games in 1972, and a prison mutiny in Clairvaux Prison the next year, France started to study the possible solutions to extremely violent attacks, under the assumptions that these would be difficult to predict and deflect.

In 1973, the GIGN became a permanent force of men trained and equipped to respond to these kind of threats while minimizing risks to the public and hostages, for the members of the unit, and for the attackers themselves. The GIGN became operational on the first of March, 1974, under the command of Lieutenant Christian Prouteau.

Ten days later, it had its first intervention against a deranged person in Ecquevilly, proving the necessity of the unit. GIGN initially had 15 members, which increased to 48 by 1984, 57 by 1988, and 87 by 2000.

In 2007, a major reorganization was implemented, with GIGN, EPIGN and GSIGN staff fused together into a single 380-member unit also called GIGN. In future newly recruited gendarmerie officers will be trained for intervention, and then will have the opportunity to be trained in close protection and/or research/observation (missions of the old EPIGN). Total man power was expected to increase to about 420 soldiers in 2010. The goal of the reorganization was to make possible the deployment of a 200 strong unit, trained and accustomed to working together, for large-scale interventions, such as a Beslan-type mass hostage-taking - in French they're called PROM. With the reorganization the acronym GSIGN has become moot and the acronym "GIGN" no longer refers to the same small unit. Collaboration between GIGN and RAID has become more and more focused upon large hostage-rescue scenarios.