After a four-day-long detainment in France, the Nicaragua-bound Legend Airlines A340 plane, carrying 303 Indians, will leave the country on Monday. According to a lawyer for the airline, the flight would take many of the stranded passengers back to India.
The plane was sequestered while it stopped for refuelling in Vatry airport in the Marne region of eastern France on suspicions of human trafficking. The flight took off from Fujairah airport in the United Arab Emirates and was headed to Managua in Nicaragua. The plane had 11 unaccompanied minors.
Some of the Indians onboard the flight spoke Hindi and others Tamil and are believed to have contacted their families by telephone. Ten of the passengers requested asylum, a French newspaper quoted a source as saying.
Legend Airlines lawyer Liliana Bakayoko told AP that the company hoped the plane could head to Mumbai on Monday ’with as many passengers as possible. Bakayoka said as many as 280 passengers should be able to leave.
Bakayoko denied any involvement in the trafficking adding that a partner company that chartered the plane was responsible for verifying the identity documents of each passenger. The airlines was communicated about the passengers' passport information just 48 hours before the flight.
India's Embassy in France said its staff were stationed at the airport near Paris to ensure the welfare of Indian nationals after the passengers were detained by French authorities over suspected "human trafficking".
The plane was allowed to leave on Monday after the emergency hearing held at the airport to determine whether to keep the Indians sequestered any longer was halted midway over procedural disputes. The airport was turned into a makeshift courtroom Sunday as judges, lawyers and translators filled the terminal to carry out emergency hearings.
"I’m surprised at how things unfolded in the waiting area. People should have been informed of their rights, and clearly that was not the case," Francois Procureur, the head of the Châlons-en-Champagne Bar Association, told BFM television. He called the mass, hasty airport hearings "’ unprecedented."
A statement from the Marne administration said the seizure order for the airliner was lifted Sunday morning, a decision that makes it possible to contemplate the passengers in the waiting area being rerouted.
Indian citizens were arrested 41,770 times entering the U.S. illegally from Mexico in the U.S. government’s budget year that ended Sept. 30, more than double from 18,308 the previous year.