Bucharest-based Legend Airlines brought back as many as 276 passengers to Mumbai Tuesday morning. They were in a chartered flight which had originally taken off from the UAE on December 22, and was headed to Nicaragua. It had a technical stopover at the Vatry airport in the Marne region of France. It was grounded at Vatry after the local administration received an anonymous tip-off about possible human trafficking. After scrutiny, it was sent back to India.
SUKALP SHARMA spoke to LILIANA BAKAYOKO, the lawyer of Legend Airlines in France.
What was Legend’s role in this episode?
The flight was chartered by a company whose name I won’t disclose at this stage because Legend Airlines wants to protect its clients. The flight was operated as a charter flight. The client hired the plane, hired the crew, and chose the starting point and the arrival point. So, the only thing the airline had to do was just perform the flight. The client was responsible for checking the travel documents of all the passengers, their IDs, their visas, their tickets, etc. There were 303 passengers on board.
All the passengers would have been cleared by the authorities of the United Arab Emirates while they were performing the check-in at the airport. So, they would have been cleared by the police, by the customs services, and nobody found any problem and everybody was allowed to board. So even if it wanted to, Legend would not have been able to find any kind of problem.
Can you shed some light on the nationality of the client who hired the plane?
The only thing we have said already, we’ve disclosed is that it is a non-European company. But we won’t, at this moment, provide information on whether it is Indian or not, because this client, this company is also presumed innocent at this moment. No accusation has been brought against anybody. Two passengers were detained in custody. Both were released without charges and invited to leave France.
Did the French authorities receive a tip-off? Why did they interrogate the passengers?
According to the French authorities, they received an anonymous signal from somewhere, from some authority. Obviously, some very high authority provided an anonymous signal about human trafficking possibility, not certain human trafficking, but a doubt that there might be human trafficking, not by the company (Legend), but either some of the passengers, or by some third person, or maybe the company that chartered the plane, or somebody else.
So how does the process look for them now for the 25 Indians who sought asylum in France? And are you or your firm in any way involved in their legal procedure?
No, I’m the lawyer of Legend Airlines, I’m not the lawyer of the passengers. But in any case, the procedure is a long procedure, or at least not a very fast one, because as they are seeking refugee status, they have to undergo special hearings. They are supposed to explain why they feel threatened (in their country), either because of their political beliefs, or because of their religious beliefs, or because of their sexual orientations, or some other reasons, to become a refugee.
Could you give us some sort of an indicator of a breakup of these 303 passengers as to how many of them were males, how many were females. And if you could give us an idea about their age profile, anything at all?
Well, as I mentioned, I am not the lawyer of the passengers. But according to the information that has already been displayed in French media, men, women, and children were among the passengers, even a baby. So, families, entire families are also there. Many were in possession of valid ID documents, valid tickets, and valid visas. And some of them even had return tickets and hotel reservations. So, for now, we have absolutely no proof that any of the passengers intended to go beyond Nicaragua to the United States or Canada, or to any other country.
Do you have any clarity that after the French authorities cleared the passengers, except for the 25 that sought asylum, why did the plane not proceed to Nicaragua or go back to the UAE? Why did it come to India?
Most probably because the Nicaraguan authorities didn’t allow the passengers to enter their territory. Because for a plane to go somewhere, it should obtain authorisation from the country of departure as well as the country of arrival. The United Arab Emirates refused to take the passengers back, despite the fact that they left from there. And the only country that expressed the willingness to help and to act quickly, to allow these people to go somewhere else and not to remain for a long time under these absolutely inappropriate conditions, was India.
The plane reported to carry some 300 Indian citizens parks at the Vatry airport, eastern France, Saturday, Dec. 23, 2023 in Vatry. (AP) 
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