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PARIS (Reuters) – Since Thursday, French authorities have grounded a Romanian charter flight which was making a technical stopover at Vatry airport (Marne), with 303 Indian passengers on board, following anonymous information suggesting a possible human trafficking, indicated the Paris prosecutor’s office.
The Airbus A340 of the Romanian company Legend Airlines was operating a flight between Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, and Nicaragua.
“An anonymous tip reported that a plane stopping for refueling at Vatry airport (51) was carrying Indian passengers coming from the United Arab Emirates and perhaps intermediately to Nicaragua, likely to be victims of trafficking in human beings”, indicates the Paris prosecutor’s office in a statement.
The judicial investigation was entrusted to JUNALCO (National Jurisdiction for the Fight against Organized Crime), which questions passengers to try to establish the conditions and objectives of their transport, adds the prosecution.
“Two of the passengers are being questioned under police custody in order to verify whether their role could have been different from that of the others in this transport,” he specifies.
(Reporting by Tassilo Hummel, written by Tangi Salaün, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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