The Utopia 56 association seized the Paris parquet Friday for facts of unintentional homicide and omission to help. Procedures have also been launched by families of victims in England.
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Three weeks after the sinking of a boat of migrants off Calais, who caused the death of at least twenty-seven people, the Utopia Association 56 complains against the Maritime Prefect of the Channel and the North Sea, the Gray-Nose Operational Monitoring and Rescue Center (Cross) and British coast guards.
This complaint, filed on Friday, December 17 with the Paris Prosecutor’s Office, aims at the facts of “unintentional homicide” and “failure to help”. “Utopia 56 means investigations to be diligent to determine the responsibilities of French and British relief services in this tragedy,” says the lawyer of the Association, Emmanuel Daoud, in the complaint, of which Le Monde became aware. The complainants consider that people were shipwrecked “despite calls to the French and French relief services”.
In London, procedures were also launched by families of victims from Iraqi Kurdistan. Counsel Maria Thomas, from the Cabinet Duncan Lewis Solicitors, declares to have introduced Saturday, December 18, for two of them, requests to the British Government. This approach, prior to a contentious action, aims to ask “that a public inquiry is open to determine whether the acts or omissions of the British agencies involved in the coordination of the Research and Rescue Mission on 24 November resulted in violations. of the European Convention on Human Rights “. The lawyer specifies having solicited an independent self-relief expertise that indicates that there may have been serious failures, which could have contributed to the significant loss of lives. ” M e Thomas expects a response from the British government by January 3rd.
According to the testimonies of the only two survivors, entrusted to the Kurdish Media Rudaw, the migrants aboard the boat would have called in vain help while their canoe deflates and that their engine had fallen down. British and French would have been returning the ball, claiming that the boat was, for the first, in French waters and vice versa. These testimonies were corroborated by members of the families of victims, who were in telephone contact with their loved ones at the time of the attempt to cross. One of them explained in a vocal message that the British relief was en route. In addition, according to a judicial source in France, the beginnings of the survey open as a result of the sinking have highlighted the calls made to relief in the detailed telephone invoices extracted by the police.
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