updated 10:47 p.m. ET June 6, 2008

PARIS - Dressed in designer labels and raising the occasional Nazi salute, the drunken, white mob marched through Paris’ Left Bank en route to watch the city’s premier soccer club, Paris-Saint Germain.

“PSG, hoo-li-gan!” reverberated their chilling cry. Riot police looked on as they beat and kicked a lone Arab man.

Weeks earlier at the same spot, a similar mob doused a group of black train passengers with beer and shouted monkey chants at a black woman carrying her small child until she fled frantically up an escalator.

Both times — before the League Cup final between PSG and Lens on March 29 and before the French Cup final against Lyon on May 24 — these episodes occurred not at a stadium but in the Saint-Michel train station, a bustling transport hub in Paris’ historical center.

Both times, there were no preventative measures put in place, no police escort and no police intervention.

Racism also has dogged France’s national team, which plays Romania in the opening Group C match Monday in the European Championship. France captain Patrick Vieira, who is black, once said he’d “think twice before setting foot” again at PSG’s Parc des Princes stadium after fans howled monkey chants. Former PSG and France midfielder Vikash Dhorasoo was racially insulted when playing for the club in 2005-2006.

The International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, known by its French acronym LICRA, asked for governmental action after the March 29 train incident.

On that day, about a dozen black passengers had to flee up an escalator as PSG fans coming down the other way doused them with beer, hurled bottles, and several started to give chase.

“One color, white power!” shouted some, thumping the roof of the train.

When the doors opened at the Chatelet Station on the Right Bank, monkey chants and insults were aimed at black passengers on the platform.

No police were nearby, and there was little that witnesses, standing on moving escalators, could do to intervene.

The Paris police spokeswoman would not comment on why riot police did not respond to the May 24 incident or on the limited preventative measures for PSG games. The French Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to an e-mailed message seeking comment.

Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie recently vowed to tackle the “the violence that has become a plague in sports in recent years.”

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The violence resurfaced before the May 24 final. PSG hooligans looking for non-white targets assaulted an Arab man as he waited for his train to depart. They punched and kicked the man, who tried to fight back, until passengers eventually forced the train door shut.

Standing close by were a group of CRS riot police, who did not intervene.

Two days later, LICRA asked authorities to “identify as soon as possible the troublemakers from the Parisian club.”

Two people suspected of involvement in the attacks were detained last week after a witness came forward, but were later released, a spokeswoman for Paris police headquarters said. Surveillance video did not provide sufficient proof of their participation, said the spokeswoman, who was not authorized to be identified.

The government did take action against PSG fans after the March 29 League Cup final, but over an insulting banner unfurled during the match, not for racist incidents.

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