Belgian police stopped for helping migrants across French border

LILLE, France: Two Belgian policemen were arrested after helping a group of migrants return to France after they wound up in Belgium by mistake while heading to Calais, officials said Thursday.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve summoned Belgium’s ambassador to France, Vincent Mertens de Wilmars, to “ask for an explanation (and) express his displeasure,” the ministry said.
The Belgian officers were arrested by their French counterparts in the border town of Nieppe late Tuesday after they brought the 13 Iraqi and Afghan migrants across the frontier.
French police said the migrants had originally been in a truck believing they were heading for Calais — the northern French port from where they wanted to try to travel on to Britain — but got out after realizing that they had crossed into Belgium.
The Belgian police then picked them up having found them on the side of the road, according to one of the Belgian officers, Georges Aeck.
He told Belgian broadcaster RTBF: “We didn’t want to leave them... on the side of the road to walk to the border.
“So we took them... in the direction they wanted to go.”
The Belgian police took the migrants back to France in a police van, “but without respecting the re-admission procedure under which you have to inform the authorities,” a police source told AFP.
French authorities expressed “their strongest condemnation after this initiative, which does not conform to the normal work practices agreed between France and Belgium.”
The Belgian police union said the French police had handcuffed their Belgian colleagues before questioning, a claim denied by French authorities.
A police source said the incident was “a first” and that the Belgian and French police “get along well.”
The migrants were taken to a border police station in the northern French city of Lille.
Three minors were placed in the care of local authorities and the adults have been temporarily detained while their status is assessed.
Calais is a magnet for migrants who try to board lorries there to reach Britain.
The migrant crisis and immigration are hot topics in France seven months ahead of presidential elections.
The French government has begun dismantling the sprawling migrant camp in Calais known as the “Jungle,” a squalid collection of tents and temporary shelters holding between 7,000 and 10,000 people.
More than 300,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean so far this year to seek asylum or a better life in Europe, according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR.