The Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal rejected the maintenance in the waiting zone of a large part of the asylum seekers landed in Toulon.
By Gilles Rof (Marseille, correspondent)
The ideal procedure imagined by the Ministry of the Interior to manage the passengers of the Ocean-Viking failed in a cozy chaos, Thursday, November 17, in front of the chambers of the Aix- In-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône). During a day when 78 files were to be studied – the day before, thirty cases had already been until 1 am – the judges refused, in the first decisions transmitted to lawyers, the maintenance of these survivors in The international waiting zone created on the Giens peninsula (Var).
Friday, November 11, the prefect of Var, Evence Richard, and the director general of foreigners in France at the Ministry of the Interior, Eric Jalon, had explained that the 177 adults arrived after three weeks of sea would be maintained “for twenty maximum days “in an area located in a holiday center. A way to avoid an official entry on French territory during the study of their eligibility for the filing of an asylum application. It was not to take into account the difficulty in managing in the legal framework such a number of files.
After four days, the procedure obliges, in fact, to request an extension of maintenance in the waiting zone with a judge of liberties and detention. Request which must be studied within twenty-four hours.
Tuesday, November 15, the Toulon court was overwhelmed by a flow of 177 extension files. “Out of 60 % of cases, the period to rule could not be held. Which led to dressements or decisions of ladies from the judges,” explains the Bâtonnière of the Varian bar, Sophie Caïs. The lawyer recounts a day of chaos, with “English interpreters for Pakistanis, a cleaning lady from the Toulon police station requisitioned as an Arabic language interpreter, confidential interviews held in the corridors”. She is also surprised to have seen “pass the files of people who have already received a favorable response to their asylum request”.
“These are not offenders”
If seventeen people have seen their prolonged detention, the decision to release migrants was taken in more than a hundred files, for which the VAR parquet and prefecture have appealed. The authorities believe that the large number of concomitant referrals should have allowed judges to postpone their twenty-four hours decisions. All procedures were accompanied by a request for suspension of the Toulon decision. It is this double flow that the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal had to absorb in an emergency, with obligation to do so in a new forty-eight hour window.
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