Smugglers are no longer the only ones to be accountable to justice. While attempts at migratory crossing in the Strait of Pas-de-Calais, between France and Great Britain, are increasing, justice has just handed down decisions which show how complex and tense the phenomenon is becoming for relief. and prevention.
On Thursday, five soldiers were indicted, suspected of having failed in their rescue mission on November 24, 2021. At that time, 27 people had died at sea after the sinking of a makeshift boat.
Phone conversations revealed
The chained Duck And The world had already revealed the recorded discussions of the soldiers of the Regional Operational Center for Surveillance and Rescue Gris Nez, in Pas-de-Calais, showing failures with the British authorities on the care of the shipwrecked, mostly Iraqi Kurds, aged 7 to 46 years old. The French authorities are suspected of having been called for help fifteen times and of not having come to the aid of the migrants on the night of the sinking.
In a telephone conversation with the Cross, of which AFP became aware, a migrant said: “Help please (…) I am in the water”. “Yes, but you are in English waters sir”, replies his interlocutor. “No, not English waters, French waters, please can you come quickly,” he begs again, before the conversation is cut off. “Ah well, don’t you hear, you won’t be saved. “I have my feet in the water”, well, I didn’t ask you to leave”, then said the operator.
In the end, no one came to their aid, neither on the French side nor on the British side, each spending the night passing the buck, according to documents from the investigation also consulted by AFP. The transcripts of conversations, however, show that the Cross contacted the British Coast Guard on several occasions.
These elements, which agree with the statements of the two survivors, had shaken, when they were revealed, the Cross Gris-Nez, but also aroused the “dismay” of associations helping migrants.
“We are in our heads very divided”
“We can only be delighted that things are progressing from a criminal point of view, that we are finally shedding light on this case, that the voices of the victims or the relatives of the victims can finally be heard at a judicial level”, responded Flore Judet, spokesperson for Utopia 56, an association helping migrants.
“We are in our heads very divided. At the same time we were very shocked to learn what could have been said when people were dying and at the same time (…) these people from the Cross are so much in demand and are doing such a wonderful job, that we , we would not have filed a complaint, ”said Claire Millot of the Salam association to AFP.
The investigation was carried out by the Research Section of the Maritime Gendarmerie of Cherbourg, in the Channel. According to a judicial source, these five people, three women and two men, were indicted for failure to assist a person in danger and left free after their interrogation.
In this case, ten people suspected of being smugglers, mostly Afghans, had already been indicted. An investigation is also underway across the Channel. The British authorities announced at the end of November that they had arrested a man, “suspected of being a member of the organized criminal group which conspired to transport the migrants to the United Kingdom on board a small boat”.
“Meeting violence”
Alongside this investigation, another case has shed light on clandestine crossings and the role of law enforcement. That same Thursday, 38 migrants were taken into custody for “violence in meetings” after three gendarmes were injured. The latter were trying to prevent a boat from setting sail at Oye-Plage, in Pas-de-Calais.
Four of those in custody, aged in their twenties and of Afghan and Albanian nationality, are to be tried on Wednesday for “aggravated violence committed against gendarmes”, the prosecutor who requested their placement told AFP. in pre-trial detention.
Three gendarmes were traveling in a buggy when they were stoned on Thursday morning by migrants, which led to the loss of control of their vehicle. “The windshield of one of the buggies shattered following the throwing of a stone” and it “swerved in soft sands, causing it to overturn”, specified the prosecution.
The attack “continued on the three gendarmes stuck in the buggy before a rapid intervention by their colleagues to free them”. These three gendarmes, who “suffer from limb and skull injuries”, have “not been hospitalized”, but “two have ITTs of three and six days”.
Some 46,000 asylum seekers crossed the Channel in 2022, mostly Afghans, Iranians and Albanians. About 8,000 were rescued in French waters.