Paris and Brussels appear to be at odds after two Belgian police officers were detained by French authorities while returning a group of migrants to France.
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Mr Cazeneuve was so “unhappy” about what happened he called an emergency meeting with the Belgian ambassador to discuss the incident.
A second French source familiar with the case, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Belgian officers had remarked that it was “not necessarily the first time” such a thing had happened. On investigation, Belgian police discovered 13 migrants from Syria and Iraq inside.
“The precise rule is that you bring refugees to the border”.
But they strayed into France, where they were arrested and questioned.
Two Belgian policemen have been questioned by their French counterparts after they were caught with 13 illegal immigrants in their vehicle.
There they were detained by French police and were held at the police headquarters in the nearby town of Armentiere.
French authorities have vowed they will close the camp in the coming months and are already dispersing the migrants there to other parts of France or sending them home.
The migrants were reportedly transferred to a police van and driven across the border, before their vehicle was intercepted by French police in Nieppe.
“So we took them.in the direction they wanted to go”.
The Belgian police union on Wednesday said the French police had handcuffed their Belgian colleagues before questioning, a claim denied by French authorities, and the union took it back.
The police chief of Ypres, where the detained officers are from, said: “Normally in the procedure, when one is indicted one must still know why…”
“We didn’t do it for money, this isn’t human trafficking”.
He told Belgian broadcaster RTBF: “We didn’t want to leave them. on the side of the road to walk to the border”.
Two Belgian police officers were briefly detained by their French colleagues as they returned a group of migrants to French soil, an incident that raised tensions between the neighbors.
“Talks are continuing between the authorities of both countries to continue good relations and cooperation, particularly in the area of immigration”, a police spokesman for France’s northern department of Nord said.
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Belgium’s ambassador to France, Vincent Mertens de Wilmars, was summoned Thursday over the incident “so we can ask him for an explanation”, the French interior ministry said. Cazeneuve also spoke by telephone with his Belgian counterpart, Jan Jambon.
