von: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2011/04/2011428191651858227.html
Human rights groups have questioned the legality of the French police’s arrests of migrants from Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
French police said they carried out the latest round of arrests on Wednesday night, detaining immigrants who were sleeping rough in parks in Paris and Marseille and drawing condemnation from rights groups.
Police said 60 more immigrants, mostly Tunisians with some Egyptians and Libyans, were arrested earlier on Tuesday in and around Paris, for „breaking residency laws“.
In Marseille, about 15 immigrants were arrested as non-governmental organisations intervened to try to house them, Bernard Eynaud of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said.
Alexandre Leclève, a spokesperson for La Cimade, a French NGO that advocates migrants‘ rights, told Al Jazeera that the detention of the migrants was “completely illegal”.
Normally, migrants without residency papers are placed into detention centres, and must appear before a judge within 48 hours.
However because many of the recent North African migrants have been given Italian documents, granting them residency rights in France, Leclève said they are being handled outside the framework of the standard procedure.
„It’s a way of side stepping the law,“ he said.
His organisation will be taking legal steps to challenge the measures taken by the French authorities.
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Muammar Gaddafi long co-operated with European countries to prevent the flow of migrants from crossing the Mediterranian Sea, a crossing which many North African youths believe will bring them a brighter future.
With the Tunisian president ousted by a popular uprising and Libya in the midst of civil war, the two countries are no longer patrolling the seas, and thousands of migrants have made the trip, many of them touching land on the tiny Mediterranean island of Lampedusa.