The humanitarian ship accosted on November 11 in Toulon with 234 people rescued in the Mediterranean on board.
MO12345LEMONDE with AFP
A week after the reception of the “Ocean-Viking” in Toulon, more than half of the survivors of the humanitarian ship, one hundred and twenty-three migrants, were “the subject of a refusal of entry On the territory “French, announced the Ministry of the Interior before the Council of State, Friday, November 18.
The SOS Mediterranean rescue boat had accosted on November 11 in the Toulon military port, after three weeks of navigation in search of a reception port and a standoff between France and Italy.
Of the two hundred and thirty-four people rescued by the ambulance boat in the Mediterranean, around forty isolated minors were taken care of by social assistance to childhood. The hundred and ninety-nine other survivors, all adults, were placed in a closed “waiting zone” where they were interviewed by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless (OFPRA). The latter had to determine the merits of their asylum request to be officially admitted to the territory.
Ofpra has issued “one hundred and twenty-three unfavorable opinion” and the persons concerned “are the subject of a refusal of entry into the territory,” said Charles-Edouard Minet, assistant director of the Legal Council and litigation of the Ministry of the Interior, during a hearing of the high administrative court devoted to the relevance of the confinement zone created by the authorities.
Sixty-six favorable opinion
The French Asylum Agency “issued sixty-six opinions favorable to admission to the territory,” said this representative of the ministry. “All those with favorable opinion and those whose judicial judge decided the liberation are oriented towards the asylum systems,” said Place Beauvau. These people will be distributed in the eleven European countries (including Germany, Finland and Portugal) which had volunteered to welcome them after their landing in France.
However, the Ministry of the Interior did not specify whether the hundred and twenty-three survivors which were opposed to a refusal to enter the territory were going to be the subject of an expulsion procedure. At the beginning of the week, while all the hearings by OFPRA were not yet finished, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, had affirmed before the National Assembly at least forty-four people who had received a unfavorable opinion would be “renewed” in their country of origin “as soon as their state of health” would allow it.