FATHER | A plane that has been grounded in northeastern France since Thursday on suspicion of illegal immigration took off for Bombay on Monday. There were 276 of the original 303 Indian passengers on board. The two passengers suspected of being smugglers were released by the courts.
• Also read: Plane shut down in the Marne: unaccompanied minors among the passengers
• Also read: 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 stated by authorities – remain in France for the time being after submitting an asylum application that is being examined at Paris' Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport, the prefecture said Marne in a press release.
After boarding for several hours, the Airbus A340 of small Romanian airline Legend Airlines, which had been stuck at Vatry airport since Thursday afternoon, took off for Bombay on India's west coast at 2:35 p.m. (8:35 a.m., Quebec time), she said.
No fees
The two Indians, born in 1984 and 2000, suspected of being smugglers, were not charged but were given the more favorable status of assisted witnesses and were therefore released on Monday after being questioned before a Paris investigating judge.
The Paris public prosecutor's office had requested that she be placed in custody.
Photo AFP
However, they had been informed of an obligation to leave the country (OQTF), their lawyers told the AFP news agency.
Me Salomé Cohen, the lawyer for one of the two defendants, praised AFP “the extremely precise and careful reading of the investigating judge, who managed to get rid of the media coverage of this case.”
The public prosecutor's office said the judicial investigation is about suspected aiding and abetting the entry and illegal stay of foreigners in organized gangs as well as participation in a criminal organization.
Technical stopover
The classification of human trafficking by an organized gang is not currently accepted as the 303 Indians appear to have boarded this plane voluntarily, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The courts lifted the plane's seizure on Sunday and authorities then scrambled to obtain “the necessary permits” for takeoff.
The plane was initially only scheduled to make a technical stop of one hour in Vatry, time for refueling on the journey from Dubai (United Arab Emirates) to Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, where passengers heard in court on Sunday said they wanted to fly for a tourist trip .
However, he was immobilized following an “anonymous report” that passengers were “likely victims of human trafficking” in an organized gang, the Paris prosecutor's office told AFP on Friday.
Waiting area
According to a source familiar with the matter, these Indians, presumably workers in the United Arab Emirates, may have planned to go to Central America and then try to enter the United States or Canada illegally.
“We don't know if it's human trafficking, migrant smuggling or both… But we were still held at an airport for three nights and three days, 303 people on a stopover, men, women and children. It's surprising,” Geneviève Colas, the anti-trafficking collective's Catholic Relief-Caritas coordinator, told AFP on Sunday.
“If they are indeed victims of human trafficking, it is not normal to simply send them back to another country,” said Ms. Colas.
According to the Prefecture of Marne, single beds, toilets and showers have been installed from scratch in the waiting area of the airport to cope with this unprecedented situation.
The president of Châlons-en-Champagne, Mr François Procureur, expressed concern on Sunday about “problems of cramped conditions” and “poor living conditions”.
The judiciary had on Sunday questioned the legality of the process of detaining the passengers in this waiting area, deeming it illegal for the first three passengers questioned by a freedoms and detention judge.
“Many thanks to the French government and Vatry airport for quickly resolving the situation,” the Indian embassy in France responded to X.