“This Thursday, November 17, the public prosecutor was informed of the escape of 26 minors,” said the Var Department, confirming its president’s announcements to the press. “Three of the 44 minors had already escaped the day after and the day after their care”, and Thursday morning “there are 23 other minors who are missing,” said Jean-Louis Masson, the LR president of the department, on Thursday at Figaro.
“It was foreseeable for us,” Christophe Paquette, deputy director general in charge of solidarity at the Var departmental council, reacted to AFP.
Specific goals
Among these 26 minors there was a majority of Eritreans who, according to him, “never stay” because “they have specific objectives in northern European countries” such as the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland or even Germany, where they want to be reunited with family or relatives .
These migrants, believed to be minors, were not in a closed waiting room, unlike 190 other adults who disembarked on Friday 11 November in Toulon after two weeks of wandering in the Mediterranean aboard the Ocean Viking, the ambulance ship of SOS Méditerranée .
I can’t dissuade them
“Our mission is to protect them and not detain them,” Christophe Paquette added, noting that the department had “signaled their departure” after “trying to dissuade them.” The escaped minors “have behaved exemplarily, they left thanking us”, he insisted.
“The phenomena of flight of unaccompanied minors (Editor’s note: unaccompanied minors) they are frequent, for many reasons (family ties in another European country, for example). Hospitalization is a phase of protection of the minor which cannot correspond to confinement”, declared the public prosecutor of Toulon, Samuel Finielz, in a message to the press.
Ocean Viking: “One day a leader should explain why we need them…”
The extreme right chastises the executive’s policy
On the side of the national rally, Marine Le Pen estimated on Twitter, following these leaks, that “this government makes our country look ridiculous”. For her, the executive is “humiliated” and the situation is “out of control”.
In a tweet, Eric Zemmour, leader of the Reconquest party, launched: “Laugh or cry? Each time, I wonder if we can sink further. The answer is invariably yes.”
Questioned the president of Debout la France, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan FM TVhe says that “the government lied”: “he said ‘we help the migrants but you will see we will be very firm’ […] and in fact he is completely overwhelmed, helpless”.
France plans to deport 44 of the 234 survivors of the Ocean Viking
123 “repulsed” in France out of 234 survivors
More than half of the survivors of the Ocean Viking, or 123 migrants, were “subject to a refusal to enter French territory”, the Interior Ministry indicated this Friday before the Council of State, a week after receiving the humanitarian ship in Toulon. Of the 234 people rescued by the ambulance boat in the Mediterranean, 189 survivors, i.e. all adults placed in a closed “waiting area”, were questioned by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra), which issued ” 123 unfavorable opinions” and these people “are the object of a refusal to enter the territory”, said Charles-Edouard Minet, deputy director of legal advice and litigation of the ministry, during a hearing dedicated to the relevance of the area of confinement created by the authorities.
