Yet another attempt will be made in the ongoing saga of joint Anglo-French deportation flights to Afghanistan tonight. Information has leaked out, via the French migrant support organisation Cimade, that the regular UK 'Operation Ravel' flight to Kabul will again try to call in to Lille's Lesquin Airport to pick up Afghani deportees, many of whom were moved to the Lesquin detention centre last night. To protest the 22:00 flight, another demonstration has been organised at the airport for 20:00 tonight, in addition to the 10,000 signature petition against all forced deportaion flights to Afghanistan organised by France Terre d'Asile.
As a less than pleasant footnote, the Daily Mail and, in particular, its journalist Peter Allen, are continuing to pedal the lie that the French deportees are to receive "a £1,900 cash payment paid for by British and French taxpayers". As reported before, this particularity pernicious attempt to whip up resentment to people who are being sent back to a warzone against their will has been repeated elsewhere by the same odious individual. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
UPDATE: According to the French Immigration Minister Eric Besson, the plan to deport what the French press was claiming variously to be 16 Afghans from Paris or an unknown number from Lille, went ahead with 3 Afghans being deported from Roissy Airport bound for Kabul. Besson claimed that one had been detained at the Italian border, one in Paris and only one during the destruction of the Pashtun 'Jungle' in Calais. A fourth man was also due to be deported but, according to Cimade, he resisted, was injured and not put on the flight.
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