Will there soon be legal consequences after the immobilization of a plane in the Marne? Two of the 303 Indian passengers on the plane, which has been grounded since Thursday on suspicion of human trafficking, will be brought before an investigating judge on Monday (25 December) for possible indictment, while the vast majority of the other passengers are due to take off for India later in the day.

A judicial investigation for aiding the illegal entry and stay of foreigners in the country as part of an organized gang and participation in a criminal association has been opened by the National Jurisdiction for the Fight against Organized Crime (Junalco), the Paris prosecutor's office told AFP.

The two men, born in 2000 and 1984, were taken into custody on Friday on suspicion of having played a role in what could be an illegal immigration ring. The Public Prosecutor's Office requested that they be remanded in custody.

Back to Mumbai

The plane, whose seizure was lifted by the court on Sunday, "should leave during the day", the Marne prefecture said. He is due to head to Mumbai, said Liliana Bakayoko, a lawyer for the airline, Legend Airlines. "We got permission to fly this morning from the Indian authorities but we are still waiting for the time slot."

The aircraft is still parked on Monday morning on the runway of the small airport of Vatry, 150 km from Paris. A boarding bridge has been installed. The first passengers began to pass through the boarding gate, the lawyer and the prefecture said.

Authorizations have been obtained by the company for 301 of the 303 passengers on the flight, "except for the two people in police custody," Bakayoko said.

Not all of them are likely to get on board, as the asylum seekers, 12 of whom were <> late Sunday afternoon according to a source close to the case, are expected to be transferred to another waiting area. Among these asylum seekers are five of the <> unaccompanied minors (UAMs) who were passengers on the flight, the Association d'accompagnement éducatif de la Marne, which has been appointed ad hoc administrator of these minors, told AFP.

In addition, according to Liliana Bakayoko, "a certain number of people do not want to go to India, they are very unhappy, they want to go to Nicaragua", where the first Indians interviewed on Sunday had said they wanted to go for tourism.

The Airbus A340 of the small Romanian company Legend Airlines was initially only supposed to make a one-hour technical stopover in Vatry, the time it took to refuel on its route from Dubai (United Arab Emirates) to Managua (capital of Nicaragua). But he was immobilized there following an "anonymous report" according to which passengers were "likely to be victims of human trafficking" in an organized gang, the Paris prosecutor's office said on Friday.

"My fear is that we'll put them back on the plane, and then what?"

"We don't know if it's human trafficking, migrant smuggling or neither... But we still kept 303 people, men, women and children, in an airport for three nights and three days. It's surprising," Geneviève Colas, coordinator of the Collective Against Human Trafficking, told AFP on Sunday.

The Marne prefecture points out that individual beds, toilets and showers have been installed in the airport's waiting area created from scratch to deal with this unprecedented situation, as well as a "family area to ensure parent-child intimacy".

But François Procureur, president of the Châlons-en-Champagne Bar Association, said on Sunday that he was moved by "problems of cramped conditions and poor living conditions".

"My fear is that we'll put them back on the plane, and then what? If they are really victims of trafficking, it's not normal to simply send them back to another country," says Geneviève Colas.

On Sunday, the court had questioned the legality of the procedure keeping passengers in this waiting area, deeming it illegal for the first three passengers heard by a liberty and detention judge.

With AFP

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