At the end of last week, four refugees from the administrative detention center (CRA) of Paris-Vincennes (12th century) were taken into police custody after they refused to be tested for Covid-19, report our colleagues from the
Parisian
, Friday February 5.
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Deferred and tried, some were sentenced to imprisonment for immediate appearance.
Some countries require a PCR test to cross the border, to oppose testing amounts to a refusal to send them back to their country.
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One of these four migrants, a Senegalese, had also been referred for an appearance on prior admission of guilt, a procedure otherwise known as “
pleading guilty
”.
According to
Le Parisien
, the man would have explained to the police that he had been summoned to the infirmary of the detention center without knowing what awaited him and that he had therefore refused to go there.
The judges of the Paris court sentenced him to three months in prison for "evasion of the execution of a deportation measure to the border".
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“It is a serious violation of freedoms. We have a reason for placing in custody which is fallacious. The PCR test is a medical act that is intimate and we must be able to refuse it. Because these are foreigners in an irregular situation, can we do anything to them? I would not be surprised that when countries require the vaccination passport, it criminalizes the fact of refusing to be vaccinated, ”
explained to the
Parisian
Me Martin Vettes, who defended one of the refugees.
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This trend is also leading to congestion in police custody cells, as several peace officers have observed: "
we do the job, but we waste time with these cases,
" an official told the
Parisian
.
And to add that "
the detainees who refuse the tests do not go to prison and return to the CRA.
And at the same time, you have to deal with all other matters.
"
Also in Rouen, a 40-year-old Chechen national, subject to deportation and fearing for his life if he returned to Russia, refused a Covid test necessary for his deportation.
He was sentenced to two months in prison with a committal warrant on February 2 by the Rouen court, according to the
Paris-Normandy
regional daily
.
For certain refusals of tests, another sanction is envisaged: an extension of the administrative detention by a judge of freedoms and detention (JLD), notes
Le Parisien
.