The majority of Indian passengers confined for more than three days at Vatry airport in Marne, left for India this Monday. The two Indians suspected of having played a role in what could be an illegal immigration network were released by the courts.
The plane, which has been immobilized since Thursday at Vatry airport in Marne, took off on Monday around 2:40 p.m., with 276 Indian passengers on board out of the initial 303, according to a source close to the matter.
Arriving Thursday afternoon in Vatry for a technical stopover, the aircraft remained immobilized there for almost four days due to an anonymous report of suspicion of human trafficking. Twenty-seven passengers remain in France: two people presented Monday to an investigating judge with a view to possible indictment, and 25 others having filed an asylum application, which will be analyzed at Roissy-Charles airport de Gaulle, according to the source close to the file.
Finally, the two Indians from the flight immobilized since last Thursday in the Marne, and placed in police custody, were released by the courts. They were suspected of being smugglers.
A judicial investigation for assistance in the entry and illegal stay of foreigners in the territory in organized gangs and participation in a criminal association was opened by the National Jurisdiction for the Fight against Organized Crime (Junalco), said the prosecution. from Paris to AFP.
The two men, born in 2000 and 1984, were taken into police custody on Friday, suspected of having played a role in what could be an illegal immigration network. The prosecution requested their placement in pre-trial detention.
The plane carrying 303 Indian passengers, whose seizure was lifted by the courts on Sunday, “should leave during the day”, the Marne prefecture told AFP.
He must head to Bombay (India), Liliana Bakayoko, the lawyer for the airline, Legend Airlines, told AFP. “We obtained flight authorization from the Indian authorities this morning but we are still waiting for the time slot.”
Very unhappy passengers
The aircraft is still parked Monday morning on the runway of the small Vatry airport (Marne), 150 km from Paris, noted an AFP journalist. A boarding bridge has been installed.
The first passengers began to pass through the boarding gate, said the lawyer and the prefecture.
Authorizations were obtained by the company for 301 of the 303 passengers on the flight, “except for the two people placed in police custody”, said Ms. Bakayoko.
Not all of them will likely board, since the asylum seekers, 12 of them late Sunday afternoon according to a source close to the matter, should be transferred to another waiting area.
Among these asylum seekers are five of the eleven unaccompanied minors (UMAs) passengers on the flight, the Marne Educational Support Association, appointed ad hoc administrator for these minors, told AFP.
Furthermore, according to Liliana Bakayoko, “a certain number of people do not want to go to India, they are very unhappy, they want to go to Nicaragua”, where the first Indians interviewed on Sunday said they wanted to go for tourism.
The Airbus A340 of the small Romanian company Legend Airlines was initially only scheduled to make a one-hour technical stopover at Vatry, time to refuel on its route linking Dubai (United Arab Emirates) to Managua, the capital of Nicaragua.
But he was detained there 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 told AFP on Friday.
Conditions denounced
“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”, reacted to AFP on Sunday Geneviève Colas, coordinator for Secours catholique-Caritas of the Collective against trafficking in human beings.
The Marne prefecture emphasizes that individual beds, toilets and showers have been installed in the waiting area of the airport, created from scratch to deal with this unprecedented situation, as well as a “+family+ zone”. to ensure parent-child privacy.
Maître François Procureur, President of Châlons-en-Champagne, was moved on Sunday by “problems of cramped conditions and poor living conditions”.
“My fear is that we will put them back on the plane, and then? If they are really victims of trafficking, it is not normal to simply send them back to another country,” judges Ms. Colas.
Justice had questioned on Sunday the legality of the procedure keeping the passengers in this waiting area, deeming it illegal for the first three passengers interviewed by a judge of freedoms and detention.