The circumstances of this drama remain fuzzy. Questions are in particular on the calls that migrants have passed to the French and English authorities, when their fortune craft began to flow.
Le Monde with AFP
They will have the mission to understand the causes, still blurred, of the drama that cost the life to twenty-seven migrants Wednesday, November 24 in the Channel. Judges of the National Jurisdiction responsible for the fight against organized crime, based in Paris, were entrusted with the survey of the sinking on Friday, December 17, reported the parquet of Paris. Legal information was opened in particular for the heads of “involuntary homicides, involuntary injuries, endangered of others, aid at the entrance and residence of a foreigner in France in organized band,” said the prosecutor’s office.
At the beginning of the week, the bodies found after the sinking had been identified. It is sixteen Kurds of Iraq, a Kurdish of Iran, four Afghans, three Ethiopians, a Somali, an Egyptian and a Vietnamese. They were women aged 22 to 46, men from 19 to 46, a 16-year-old teenager and a 7 year old child. Only two men, an Iraqi Kurdish and a Sudanese according to the Ministry of the Interior, could be rescued.
The survivors say they have called for help
According to the survey, migrants would be gone on a pneumatic boat “at the end of the night” Loon-Plage, near Greater Synthe (North), where many exiles on the coast. Questions arise on the calls that migrants have passed to the French and English authorities, when their fortune craft began to flow.
In an interview with the Iraqi Kurvian chain Rudaw, the Iraqi Kurdish survivor claimed that while the boat was starting to deflate passengers had called in vain the British and French authorities for help. The Channel Maritime Prefecture had ruled that the call for migrants in difficulty was not dealt with, but a survey of the world reports that the calls mentioned by migrants appear in detailed telephone invoices extracted by the police.
Multiplication of crossing attempts
According to the North Channel and Sea Maritime Prefecture, this sinking has been the “worst accident” since the significant increase in 2018, migratory crossings due to the increasing lock of the port of Calais and Eurotunnel , borrowed so far by migrants trying to rally England.
Attempts to migratory crossing of the small boat on board doubled in the last three months, cautioned on November 19, the Maritime Prefect of the North Channel and the North Sea, Philippe Dutrieux. As at November 20, 31,500 migrants had left the coast since the beginning of the year and 7,800 migrants had been saved, he said. According to London, 22,000 migrants have passed the crossing over the first ten months of the year. The British Press Association agency has estimated this figure to more than 25,700, three times more than all year round 2020.