French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said today, a computerized passport system... Read More
The three men, detained in Turkey last month after returning from Syria, were put on a flight to the southern French city of Marseille. Police were waiting for them at Paris’s Orly airport, 700 kilometers (435 miles) away.
The pilot of a flight to Orly refused to let the men board the plane, according to a statement from the French Interior Ministry. Turkish police then placed the men on a flight to Marseille without informing their French counterparts of the change until after their arrival in France yesterday, the ministry said.
A computerized passport system at Marseille airport that should have alerted police about the suspects’ arrival was
broken, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on France Info radio today.
“It’s a complete mess but a large part of it is due to a lack of good cooperation with the Turkish authorities,” Le Drian said.
Europe1 radio said it spoke to one of the men, who gave his name as Imad, and who said the three plan to turn themselves in to the police today. One of the men is a childhood friend of Mohamed Merah, who killed seven people in Toulouse in March 2012, and another is Merah’s brother-in-law, the radio said.
“We went through customs, we showed our passports, and there was no one to meet us,” Imad said. “We were quite surprised.”
‘Government Amateurism’
The opposition National Front said in a statement that the episode “illustrates the extraordinary amateurism of the government.”Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told Journal du Dimanche Sept. 14 that 930 French are “implicated” with Islamic State in Syria, with 350 there now, of which 60 are women.
Another 180 have returned to France, 170 are in transit, and 230 are tempted to go, he said. At least 36 people from France have died in fighting.
No comments:
Post a Comment