Hearings before a judge of freedoms and detention (JLD) will begin on Sunday December 24 to keep Indian passengers likely to be victims of human trafficking “if necessary” at Vatry airport (Marne), including flight has been grounded since Thursday, the Marne prefecture informed Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Saturday.

The 303 passengers, all of Indian nationality, have remained since Thursday evening in the airport reception hall, transformed by prefectural decree into a waiting area for foreigners. Their detention by the border police can only last four days, but a JLD can extend the duration of the placement by eight days then, exceptionally, by an additional eight days.

The hearings should begin at 9 a.m. and continue until Monday, Reims President Pascal Guillaume told AFP.

Two extended police custody

Two police custody periods which began on Friday were also “extended on Saturday evening, for a maximum duration of forty-eight hours”, the Paris prosecutor’s office told AFP, “in order to verify” whether the role of these two people ” could have been different from that of the others in this transport, and under what conditions and with what objective”.

The immobilized plane, an Airbus A340 of the Romanian company Legend Airlines, entirely white and without the name of any company, was initially supposed to connect Dubai (United Arab Emirates) to Managua, capital of Nicaragua. But what was only supposed to be a technical stopover on the runway of the small Vatry airport (Marne), 150 kilometers east of Paris, has been transformed since Thursday afternoon into a long immobilization, after a “report anonymous” according to which passengers were “likely to be victims of human trafficking” in an organized gang, the Paris prosecutor’s office said on Friday.

According to this same source, eleven unaccompanied minors are among the passengers. The adults, for their part, have all been heard. Ten passengers had submitted an asylum request at the end of the afternoon, said a source close to the case. Six unaccompanied minors have expressed the wish to submit a request, Me Aurore Opyrchal, mandated by the Châlons-en-Champagne bar to represent some of them, told AFP.

The company plans to file a civil suit or file a complaint

According to a source close to the matter, the Indian passengers, probably workers in the United Arab Emirates, could have planned to go to Central America in order to then try to enter the United States or Canada illegally. The investigation, carried out by the national jurisdiction for the fight against organized crime (Junalco), aims to “verify whether any elements would corroborate” suspicions of human trafficking, according to the prosecution.

The thirty crew members affected either by the Dubai-Vatry connection, or by the Vatry-Managua route, were “authorized to leave freely”, assured AFP Liliana Bakayoko, who presents herself as the lawyer of the airline company. Legend Airlines “has only carried out a few flights on this route, always for the same non-European customer”, she added, specifying that the company intends to “file a civil suit if proceedings are initiated by the public prosecutor , or file a complaint” otherwise. The Indian embassy in France said on Saturday, on X, that it was working towards “a rapid resolution of the situation”.

Tarpaulins were installed in front of the bay windows of the airport reception hall, as well as on the administrative buildings. Individual beds have been made available to passengers, as well as toilets and showers, explains the prefecture, which specifies that a “family” zone to ensure parent-child privacy” has been deployed. “Three meals a day [are] provided by state services,” she adds.

According to the specialized site Flightradar, Legend Airlines is a small company whose fleet is made up of four planes, including two A340-313s. Vatry airport welcomed 62,000 passengers in 2022, mainly via low-cost companies, according to the Union of French Airports.