The three border police officers were arrested on suspicion of “police violence”. They were released after six hours in police custody.
The three border police officers (PAF) arrested, Tuesday November 21, 2023, late in the afternoon at Tunis-Carthage airport, were escorting a Tunisian under an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF ), reports the French media “Le Parisien” from a police source.
The three police officers were arrested on suspicion of “police violence” against this individual.
Tuesday afternoon, at Marseille-Provence airport, a Tunisian national under OQTF (Ridha A), convicted of violence with weapons and advocating terrorism, is preparing to board a plane that will take him back to Tunis.
The latter would have rebelled on the airport tarmac and attacked the agents assigned to escort him, indicates “Le Parisien”.
The three PAF agents then used professional police techniques to control him. On the plane, the man even calmed down and apologized.
However, a video of the altercation was apparently taken by a passenger on the plane and transmitted to the Tunisian authorities, who decided to arrest the three officers shortly after landing in Tunis.
The officers were reportedly questioned for more than six hours and then released during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday.
They were able to collect their passports and return to their hotels before leaving Tunisia without incident, the French Interior Ministry told the newspaper. “They arrived in Nice at 4:20 p.m. today” (Editor’s note: Thursday).
Grégory Joron, general secretary of the police union SGP FO, reacted to this incident in the columns of the said media: “According to former escorts, for some, this is the first time this has happened.”
“The escorts often face individuals who rebel and do not want to be returned. They were picked up as they were once they arrived in Tunis, with their passports confiscated because a witness put forward the thesis of a bad gesture of “an escort against the Tunisian police is incomprehensible,” he continues.
“We expect the Ministries of the Interior and Foreign Affairs to put things straight, in a context where deportations are intensifying, particularly involving dangerous profiles.”
The Tunisian Ministry of the Interior has not, for the moment, reacted to this incident in the same way as the French Embassy in Tunisia.
“It is unacceptable that French diplomacy did nothing to support the PAF police officers arrested in Tunisia while they were carrying out their mission as part of the implementation of an OQTF,” denounces a French national on the Embassy’s Facebook page!
