Around 150 migrants from Latin America – Colombia, Cuba, Peru, Bolivia and the Dominican Republic – are living in a makeshift street camp in a Paris suburb having recently been evicted from a disused warehouse in which they were squatting. Some came to France for a better life for their family, others for political reasons. But as Irene Casado reports, all the migrants, who include children and pregnant women, face an uncertain future faced with the indifference of the local mayor and the lack of suitable housing.
The trial has opened in Aix-en-Provence of nine people, including two former French military pilots, a customs officer and a celebrity bodyguard, accused of running a trans-Atlantic cocaine smuggling scam between the Dominican Republic and France using a Dassault executive jet, in a case marked by intrigue and derring-do escapes.
Revelations about the dramatic escape by two French pilots from the Dominican Republic made headlines in France this week. The two men, convicted of cocaine trafficking, fled the Caribbean country thanks to a well-organised plan while they were on house arrest pending an appeal. But the affair took on a political flavour, too, as anger rose in the Dominican Republic about the pilots' escape and amid claims that some French government agencies were involved. In particular a Euro MP and close ally of Marine Le Pen has belatedly admitted that he was directly involved in the extraction operation. Michel Deléan, Louise Fessard and Marine Turchi report.
