Belgian police helped migrants cross French border, say officials

Two Belgian policemen were arrested for helping a group of migrants return to France after they wound up in Belgium by mistake while heading to Calais, officials said Sept. 22.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve summoned Belgium's ambassador to France, Vincent Mertens de Wilmars, to "ask for an explanation [and] express his displeasure," the ministry said, AFP reported.
The Belgian officers were arrested by their French counterparts in the border town of Nieppe late Sept. 20 after they brought the 13 Iraqi and Afghan migrants across the frontier.

French police said the migrants had originally been in a truck believing they were heading for Calais - the northern French port from where they wanted to try to travel on to Britain - but got out after realizing that they had crossed into Belgium.

The Belgian police then picked them up on the side of the road, according to one of the Belgian officers, Georges Aeck.

He told Belgian broadcaster RTBF: "We didn't want to leave them... on the side of the road to walk to the border.

"So we took them... in the direction they wanted to go." 

The Belgian police took the migrants back to France in a police van, "but without respecting the re-admission procedure under which you have to inform the authorities," a police source told AFP.  

French authorities expressed "their strongest condemnation after this initiative, which does not conform to the normal work practices agreed between France and Belgium."

An official French source said the two Belgian police officers had been questioned "as witnesses" and were able to leave the French police station later in the night.

Belgium however denied that Cazeneuve had summoned its ambassador in Paris...