(Vatry) A covered reception hall, camp beds and mobile toilets: more than 300 Indians remain confined Saturday evening in an airport in eastern France where the authorities, who suspect “human trafficking », ground their flight since Thursday.
The 303 passengers have remained since Thursday evening in the reception hall of Vatry airport, transformed by the authorities into a waiting area for foreigners. Judicial hearings must be held there from 9 a.m. Sunday (3 a.m. Eastern time) to extend, if necessary, their stay on site, Me Pascal Guillaume, the lawyer at the head of the Reims bar.
Among these passengers are 11 unaccompanied minors, said the Paris prosecutor’s office. The adults, for their part, were all interviewed by the authorities and ten passengers had submitted an asylum request at the end of the afternoon, said a source close to the case.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS NASCIMBENI, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The Airbus A340 of the Romanian company Legend Airlines
Their plane, an Airbus A340 from the Romanian company Legend Airlines, was initially scheduled to connect Dubai (United Arab Emirates) to Managua, capital of Nicaragua.
But what was only supposed to be a technical stopover on the runway of this small airport, 150 kilometers east of Paris, has transformed since Thursday afternoon into a long immobilization, after an “anonymous report” according to which passengers were “likely to be victims of human trafficking” in an organized gang, the Paris prosecutor’s office told AFP on Friday.
According to a source familiar with the matter, the Indian passengers, probably workers in the United Arab Emirates, may have planned to travel to Central America in order to then attempt to illegally enter the United States or Canada.
Two police guards
Started on Friday evening, the police custody of two passengers was extended on Saturday evening, “for a maximum duration of 48 hours”, the Paris prosecutor’s office told AFP, “in order to verify” whether the role of these two people “could have been different from that of the others in this transport, and under what conditions and with what objective”.
PHOTO CHRISTOPHE ENA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
The investigation which was opened aims to “verify whether any elements would corroborate” the suspicions of human trafficking, according to the prosecution.
Investigators have checked the identity of passengers and cabin crew, and are verifying the “conditions and objectives of transport” of these people, he said.
The thirty members of the crew, 15 for the Dubai-Vatry connection and 14 or 15 for the Vatry-Managua route, “were interviewed and authorized to leave freely,” Liliana Bakayoko, who introduced herself, told AFP. as the airline’s lawyer.
Legend Airlines “only carried out a few flights on this route, always for the same non-European customer”, she added, specifying that the company intends to “file a civil suit if proceedings are initiated by the public prosecutor , or file a complaint” otherwise.
The Indian embassy in France indicated on Saturday on X, formerly Twitter, that it was working towards “a rapid resolution of the situation”, adding that “consular staff are on site”.
“Family zone”
Tarpaulins were installed in front of the bay windows of the airport reception hall, as well as on the administrative buildings. Access remained blocked by the police and the gendarmerie on Saturday morning, noted an AFP journalist.
The law provides that if he arrives in France by plane and is refused boarding to his country of destination, a foreigner can be kept in a waiting zone for a maximum of four days by the border police.
This detention can be extended by eight days by a detention and liberty judge, then by an additional eight days exceptionally. At most, depending on the appeals, retention in the reception area can reach 26 days.
Individual beds have been made available to passengers, as well as toilets and showers, indicates the prefecture, which specifies that a “family” zone to ensure parent-child privacy” has been deployed. “Three meals a day (are) provided by state services,” she adds.
According to the specialized site Flightradar, Legend Airlines is a small company whose fleet is made up of four planes, including two A340-313s.