2023-12-24 09:00:20
Justice moves to try to clarify the mystery. From this Sunday, at 9 a.m., hearings before a judge of freedoms and detention (JLD) will begin to keep “if necessary” in the airport waiting area the passengers of the flight grounded since Thursday after- noon in the Marne, on suspicion of human trafficking, the Marne prefecture told AFP on Saturday.
The 303 passengers, all of Indian nationality, have remained since Thursday evening in the reception hall of Vatry airport, transformed by prefectural decree into a waiting area for foreigners. Their detention by the border police can only last four days, but a JLD can extend the duration of the placement by eight days then, exceptionally, by an additional eight days.
Continue to work with French Gov for the welfare of the Indians currently at the Varty airport, 150 km East of Paris, & for early resolution of the situation.
Embassy consular staff stationed there.
Thank French authorities for working on this through the long holiday weekend.
— India in France (@IndiaemFrance) December 23, 2023
The hearings, which are due to begin at 9 a.m., could continue until Monday, the president of Reims, Me Pascal Guillaume, told AFP. Two police custody which began on Friday were also “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 be different from that of others in this transport, and under what conditions and with what objective.
Several asylum applications filed
The immobilized plane, an Airbus A340 of the Romanian company Legend Airlines, entirely white and without the name of any company, was initially supposed 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 the small Vatry airport (Marne), 150 km east of Paris, turned 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 said on Friday.
According to this same source, eleven unaccompanied minors are among the passengers. The adults, for their part, have all been heard.
Ten passengers had submitted an asylum request at the end of the afternoon, said a source close to the matter, and six unaccompanied minors expressed the wish to do the same, Me Aurore told AFP. Opyrchal, mandated by the Châlons-en-Champagne bar to represent some of them.
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. The investigation, carried out by the National Jurisdiction for the Fight against Organized Crime (Junalco), aims to “verify whether any elements would corroborate” suspicions of human trafficking, according to the prosecution.
The Indian embassy in France indicated on Saturday on X, formerly Twitter, that it was working towards “a rapid resolution of the situation”.
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