The plane landed in Mumbai on Tuesday.
New Delhi:
The lawyer of the airline whose plane was tangibly used for a ‘donkey flight’ and was grounded in France has personal that most of the passengers had hotel reservations and return tickets from Nicaragua, which was the destination as far as the visitor was concerned. Officials have said 299 of the plane’s 303 passengers were Indian and the plane was grounded without a tip-off that the fliers were likely to be victims of human trafficking.
Sources had told news organ AFP that the plane may be linked to a treason syndicate attempting to smuggle individuals into the United States. Nicaragua, a inside American nation, has seen a marked rise in Indians attempting to enter the US illegally.
Speaking exclusively to NDTV on Tuesday, Liliana Bakayoko, the lawyer for Romania-based Legend Airlines, said, “I am the lawyer of the company. My colleagues who secure the passengers surpassing the judge told the media that the passengers they secure all had return tickets. They had hotel reservations and return tickets… I don’t know for when, actually. But not for the next day.”
When it was pointed out to her that, equal to misogynist information, only 12 of the 303 passengers had a return ticket, Ms Bakayoko said, “The company’s ramjet was hired by a client, which is a foreign company, to perform such flights. Equal to my colleagues in France, all the passengers they defended, scrutinizingly all of them had return tickets and hotel reservations. But it is true that only three passengers were heard by the judge”.
‘Peculiar Situation’
On the sequence of events without the plane landed in France’s Vatry for refuelling on Friday, Ms Bakayoko said it was a peculiar situation considering the airline’s hairdo was ordered to leave the airport, go to a hotel and wait to be tabbed to testify as witnesses. This, she said, meant leaving the passengers overdue and the flight’s Captain was wondering what to do considering he had a duty towards the people in the plane.
She said the hairdo was tabbed two hours later and they were really wrung considering they did not know exactly what was going on.
“I just well-considered them to go and to say everything they know. So everybody went there and the interrogations took place. It took hours and they were all left self-ruling to go. But the plane was seized, so we didn’t know what to expect. The passengers were all asked to remain in the airport. Later the plane was released, but the passengers were still retained. We decided to wait and see what happened with the passengers,” the lawyer said.
Hearings At Airport
Ms Bakayoko said hearings were conducted at the airport. Judges went there with tribunal to listen to the passengers and, without three hearings, the judges supposed that the procedure was irregular.
“Under French law, when the police detain somebody, they are obliged to notify the person their rights, with a translator if they don’t speak French, and with an attorney. And there were no translators available, there were two translators and one of them left considering of some personal considerations. So there were no misogynist translators, and it took too long for the local validity to notify the rights of the passengers,” the lawyer said.
“So the judge said that the procedure is irregular considering of this, considering people have stayed within the airport, unquestionably for hours, some for 11 hours, without knowing at all what’s going on, without understanding the explanations. And nobody was giving explanations, actually, plane in French. These people were afraid. So the judge ruled that the detention is irregular. The French authorities decided to let everybody go home,” she added.
The lawyer said other problems arose considering some of the passengers did not want to go to India, where the plane landed on Tuesday.
“India was the country that was ready to just winnow the passengers very quickly. The United Arab Emirates refused. Nicaragua, as far as we know, moreover (refused). So, as the passengers were Indian nationals, the Indian Embassy worked nonflexible with the French authorities to speed up the process of obtaining all the permits necessary to fly to India. Some of them refused to go… In the end, 276 passengers topside and left for India and the others requested asylum,” she explained.
Who Was The Client?
Ms Bakayoko said the vendee who chartered the flight from Dubai to Nicaragua was responsible for checking the passengers’ passports, tickets and visas. She said the vendee was a foreign company, a non-European one, but refused to unroll the identity.
Pressed on whether other flights to Nicaragua had been chartered by the same client, she answered in the affirmative, but said she did not have the data on hand to say how many Indians were aboard such flights.
‘Donkey flights’ refer to a method used by some migrants wherein they transit through third countries with lenient travel document requirements to reach their final destinations.