WORLD
The hearings are expected to begin on Sunday at 9 a.m. local time (5 a.m. Brazil time) and continue until Monday
Per AFPDEC 23, 2023 at 7:43 p.m
French courts will begin hearings on Sunday (24) to decide whether the 303 passengers of Indian nationality on a flight between the United Arab Emirates and Nicaragua should remain at an airport in the north of the country, where they have been stuck since Thursday, according to a complaint because of human trafficking.
The plane, owned by Romanian airline Legend Airlines, was scheduled to fly from Dubai to Managua with a stopover in France. This Airbus A340 has been blocked at Vatry airport, around 150 km east of Paris, since Thursday after receiving an anonymous complaint that the passengers could be “victims of human trafficking,” according to prosecutors in the French capital.
Under French law, a foreigner can be detained in the waiting area for up to four days. However, this period may be extended by a judge by eight days and, in exceptional cases, by a further eight days.
The hearings were scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. local time (5 a.m. Brazilian time) and last until Monday, according to the president of the Reims Bar Association, Pascal Guillaume.
The public prosecutor's office said eleven unaccompanied minors were among the passengers.
Ten of the foreigners had applied for asylum by late Saturday afternoon, according to a source familiar with the case. Six unaccompanied minors have expressed a desire to file an application, said Aurore Opyrchal, a lawyer assigned to represent some of them.
A source close to the investigation said the passengers, likely Indian workers in the Emirates, were traveling to a Central American country to try to travel north and enter the United States or Canada irregularly.
Two of the passengers were arrested on Friday on suspicion of human trafficking, the prosecutor's office said.
The arrests were “extended on Saturday evening for a maximum of 48 hours” to check whether the role of these two people “could have been different from that of the other” travelers and “under what conditions and for what purpose”.
Interrogations of the crew
The crew members, 15 for the DubaiVatry route and 14 or 15 for the VatryManagua route, “were interviewed and were allowed to leave freely and return home if they wanted,” Liliana Bakayoko, the airline's lawyer, said on Saturday.
Legend Airlines “has already operated several flights on this route, always for the same nonEuropean customer,” he explained. The company wants to “become a civil party if the public prosecutor files a lawsuit or reports.”
The Indian Embassy in France said on Saturday that it was working on a “quick resolution of the situation”.
A police cordon blocks access to the airport and a row of white tarpaulins obscures the arrivals hall window, an AFP journalist noted.
The local civil protection agency installed mobile showers, beds and toilets at the airport. Authorities said a “family zone” had also been demarcated to ensure privacy between parents and children and that “three meals a day” would be provided.