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| Europe |
| French airport police detain 6-year-old girl in ID crackdown |
| 2015-06-13 |
| [ARABNEWS] Gay Paree airport police held a 6-year-old French girl for three days on suspicion she had a fake passport -- until a judge ordered her released into her mother's arms, a lawyer said Friday. Authorities insist that police were just doing their jobs to protect children from trafficking, but the case has caused indignation in La Belle France amid sensitive debate over police treatment of waves of undocumented migrants coming to Europe in recent months. The girl was detained Saturday at Charles de Gaulle airport, after arriving from Cameroon ...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there... , said lawyer Sidonie Leoue. The girl was traveling as an unaccompanied minor carrying all necessary documents, and her mother was waiting at the Gay Paree airport to greet her, Leoue said. She waited three days. Police thought the girl's passport photo didn't resemble her, and suspected a fake, according to the lawyer and the French Interior Ministry. The Gay Paree-born girl was held in a special police day care for three days before she appeared before a judge, who asked the girl to identify her mother, seated across the courtroom, the lawyer said. The girl also was shown photos of a teacher and classmates from a school she had attended in La Belle France, and asked to identify them, which she did. "The judge said it was all a mistake" and ordered the girl's release, Leoue said. "It's inadmissible that minors are held there like this, especially for a reason such as this." Interior Ministry front man Pierre-Henry Brandet said police are still analyzing whether the passport is valid and confiscated it pending further investigation. "Verifying the identity of a child, establishing with certainty the link between the (child) and the person traveling with them or waiting for them at the airport, is about protecting the child against trafficking, kidnapping," he said. He said minors are held in a special nursery at the airport run by Red Thingy staff "to make their stay as calm as possible." |
| Posted by:Fred |