The Boulogne-sur-Mer prosecutor’s office, in Pas-de-Calais, has opened an investigation for “possible violence committed by persons holding public authority”. An approach whose origin is a report by associations of police violence on migrants in Calais that occurred in August.
Upon receipt of the report, “I seized the IGPN (General Inspectorate of the National Police) of Lille to investigate the facts which were reported to me”, specified to AFP the prosecutor of Boulogne-sur- Mer, Guirec Le Bras, specifying that the investigations “began”.
“Punches to the face” and “kicks to the ground”
The alleged facts, which date back to the night of August 22 to 23, are related in a press release from Human Rights Observers (HRO), a project supported by the Auberge des Migrants and Utopia 56. The victims reported to the associations that a group of migrants, originally from Eritrea, had gone that evening “to the parking lot of a Calais service station in order to try to get into a truck with the hope of reaching the United Kingdom”.
Once there, “at the sight of a CRS truck, part of the group” turned around “and only two 18-year-olds” remained. According to their testimony, the CRS would then have “kicked them in the face” and, while these two people were on the ground, “about seven CRS” would have “kicked them many times on the ground”, according to the press release from the associations. . “The CRS left laughing, leaving the two injured people on the ground,” they added.
Contacted, the firefighters transported one of the victims to the hospital. The medical certificate drawn up by a doctor “reports bleeding and a deviation of the nasal bridge (fracture), pain on chest palpation, as well as scrotal pain”, they specified.