This is his first trip to the Channel coast since taking office two months ago. The Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, was to go to Pas-de-Calais on Friday, November 29, to talk about migration issues with the territory's elected officials and meet those involved in sea rescue, under pressure. Since the start of the year, 35,000 people have reached England aboard inflatable boats. And at least seventy-two died attempting these crossings, according to the estimate of the Pas-de-Calais prefecture. This is more than in the last five years as a whole.
A reality that impacts judicial services. The Boulogne-sur-Mer public prosecutor's office has opened seventeen investigations into shipwrecks resulting in deaths. Furthermore, ten procedures were recently opened following the discovery of bodies on coastal beaches or at sea. “The objective is to give an identity to the bodies and to link this identity to a shipwreck”explains prosecutor Guirec Le Bras.
In the minds of many people, there is no doubt that they are linked to the shipwreck which occurred on October 23 off the coast of Blériot-Plage (Pas-de-Calais). Officially, forty-five people were rescued and three bodies recovered from the shipwreck area.
Quickly, however, testimonies from survivors or relatives of missing people revealed a much heavier toll, of around fifteen victims. “Several associations and people relayed the information in the days following the sinkingremembers Flore Judet, of the L’Auberge des migrants association. We transmit the information that we collect in the field, the name, photos, distinctive signs, and the contacts of relatives who are sometimes received… Since the police and gendarmerie services do not go into the field, they count a lot on us. »
“We get taken from police station to police station”
But for the authorities, it is still too early to make a link between the bodies washed up by the sea and the boat which broke up on October 23. Each corpse is therefore the subject of a separate investigation, entrusted, as desired, to a police or gendarmerie service in Pas-de-Calais (Calais, Wissant, Boulogne-sur-Mer, etc.), depending on the place of the macabre discovery. A geographical fragmentation which arouses the incomprehension of associations which report a lack of organization of the investigation services. “For each body, it’s a different person who investigates. How can we find our way if no one makes the connection between them? »asks Amélie Moyart, from the Utopia 56 association, which helps migrants.
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Source: Lemonde