VATRY | A plane immobilized since Thursday in the north-east of France on suspicion of illegal immigration left Monday for Bombay, with 276 of the initial 303 Indian passengers on board, the two who were suspected of being smugglers having for their been released by the courts.
• Read also: Plane immobilized in the Marne: unaccompanied minors among the passengers
• Read also: Suspicion of human trafficking: legal marathon for 300 Indians stranded in France
In addition to these two Indians, 25 others, including five minors – and not two as initially indicated by the authorities – remain for the moment in France after having made an asylum request, which will be studied at the Parisian airport of Roissy- Charles de Gaulle, said the Marne prefecture in a press release.
After boarding which took several hours, the Airbus A340 of the small Romanian company Legend Airlines, stuck at Vatry airport since Thursday afternoon, took off at 2:35 p.m. (8 a.m. 35, Quebec time) to Bombay, on the west coast of India, she said.
No charges
The two Indians suspected of being smugglers, born in 1984 and 2000, were not charged but placed under the more favorable status of assisted witnesses and therefore emerged free on Monday after their interrogation before a Parisian investigating judge.
The Paris prosecutor’s office had requested their placement in pre-trial detention.
Photo AFP
However, they were notified of an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF), their lawyers told AFP.
Me Salomé Cohen, the lawyer for one of the two accused, praised to AFP “the extremely precise and careful reading of the investigating judge who was able to get rid of the media coverage of this case”.
The judicial investigation concerns alleged acts of aiding the entry and illegal stay of foreigners in the territory in organized gangs and participation in a criminal association, said the prosecution.
Technical stopover
The qualification of trafficking in human beings by an organized gang has not been accepted for the moment because the 303 Indians, according to a source close to the matter, apparently boarded this plane voluntarily.
The courts lifted the seizure of the aircraft on Sunday and the authorities then endeavored to “obtain the necessary authorizations” for its takeoff.
The plane was initially only scheduled to make a technical stopover of one hour in Vatry, time to refuel on its journey from Dubai (United Arab Emirates) to Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, where passengers heard by the courts Sunday said they wanted to go for a tourist stay.
But he was immobilized following an “anonymous report” according to which passengers were “likely to be victims of human trafficking” in an organized gang, the Paris prosecutor’s office explained to AFP on Friday.
Waiting area
According to a source close to the matter, these Indians, probably workers in the United Arab Emirates, could have planned to go to Central America in order to then try to enter illegally into the United States or Canada.
“We don’t know if it’s human trafficking, migrant smuggling or neither… But we were still kept in an airport, for three nights and three days , 303 people who were on a stopover, men, women and children. It’s surprising,” Geneviève Colas, the coordinator for Catholic Relief-Caritas of the Collective Against Human Trafficking, told AFP on Sunday.
“If they are really victims of trafficking, it is not normal to simply send them back to another country,” Ms.me Colas.
According to the Marne prefecture, individual beds, toilets and showers had been installed in the waiting area of the airport, created from scratch to deal with this unprecedented situation.
The president of Châlons-en-Champagne Me François Procureur was concerned on Sunday about “problems of cramped conditions” and “poor living conditions”.
Justice had questioned on Sunday the legality of the procedure keeping the passengers in this waiting zone, deeming it illegal for the first three passengers interviewed by a judge of freedoms and detention.
“Thank you to the French government and Vatry airport for the rapid resolution of the situation,” reacted the Indian embassy in France on X.