The LR mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, arrested Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on Wednesday in a letter pointing to “serious events” involving migrants in her city in recent days.
“I call on your direct intervention so that concrete and operational measures are taken as soon as possible” guaranteeing “the safety of Calais residents”, writes Bouchart in this letter, also sent to AFP.
Brawls and aggression in the hospital
In this letter, she mentions a brawl involving around thirty migrants in the city center of Calais on Sunday afternoon, a second Monday and an “aggression perpetrated within the care access office” on Tuesday.
During this last attack, a man was “irritated with the nursing staff” and “wielded a cutter while threatening them”, writes the mayor. The interpreter employed by the hospital was injured in the hand “by intervening to disarm the aggressor”, she adds. The city councilor asks to be heard by the National Assembly and the Senate as part of the examination of the bill relating to immigration.
Several arrests
Sunday’s brawl, involving a “significant number” of people, resulted in the arrest of four individuals, three of whom were tried in immediate appearance on Wednesday afternoon, the prosecutor of the Republic of Boulogne told AFP. sur-Mer, Guirec Le Bras. The outcome of these appearances was not yet known at the start of the evening.
The prosecutor also confirmed that an individual had “been arrested after taking out a cutter” during an interview at the care access office, then placed in police custody. The doctor who examined him, however, considered that he should be hospitalized because of his mental state.
Le Bras was not aware of a brawl on Monday but added that a migrant had been arrested that day “for a case of sexual assault which gave rise to a summons to court” and that another l had been on the 23rd for possession of narcotics. He notes “for the past few days, a certain number of acts committed in Calais involving people who may be or are migrants”.