THE police have been accused of mishandling the case of two Cameroonian girls who were smuggled into the country in November 2009 by a suspected trafficking ring.
Immigrant support group KISA (Action for Equality, Support and Anti-Racism) have criticised the police for failing to respond promptly to an initial report of the girls’ presence in Cyprus, and for only arresting the main suspect, Nzounda Urbain, two days after he was identified while in police custody as having illegally transported them from the north. In a press release, they also accuse the police of “distorting the facts for the benefit of the perpetrator” in statements to the court during his remand hearing last week.
“I wonder sometimes what it will take for the police to move quickly and investigate a case fully. These are worrying questions, to which we still have not had answers,” KISA director Doros Polycarpou told the Sunday Mail yesterday:
KISA has called on the Attorney-general to appoint an independent criminal investigator to look into the police’s handling of the case.
Alexandra ‘Babette’, 17, and Murielle, 16, have been in Cyprus since November after being held to ransom by a Cameroonian man who had promised to reunite them with their mother Marie Chesnel and step-father Rene who live in France. The couple had paid a total of 20,000 euros to a man in Cameroon who promised that someone would accompany the girls from Cameroon to France. The Sunday Mail alerted police to their plight on February 26.
The main problem is the apparent discrepancy between what the girls told the Sunday Mail a week ago and repeated in official statements to the police in their official statements, and what the police stated in court on Monday during Urbain’s remand hearing.
Both girls have confirmed to us that they told the police that they were met at Ercan (Tymbou) airport in the north on November 14 by an unnamed Cameroonian, who took them by taxi to a house in the north to meet Urbain. They said that Urbain immediately told them that he had not received enough money to cover their transfer to France, and so they would have to stop over temporarily in Cyprus.
The girls insist that they told the police that, having spent the night in a small hotel in the north, on November 15 they were collected by Urbain, who brought them across to the government-controlled area in his own car, taking them to the flat he rented in Strovolos.
However, the police stated in court last Tuesday that the girls were “met by a Cameroonian stranger who put them in a taxi and took them to the suspect’s (Urbain’s) Strovolos apartment where he left them.” CID officer Natassa Anastasiadou told the court that Urbain was under investigation for six charges, including trafficking of migrants and aiding third country nationals for a profit.
Police spokesman Michalis Katsounotos told the Mail yesterday that he did not believe that such an apparent discrepancy in testimony could occur, but that this would be looked into. Meanwhile, he said, the charge that Urbain personally transported the girls from the north “is part of the ongoing investigation”.
Meanwhile, there is no change to the official status of Babette and Murielle. The Interior Ministry is known to be sympathetic to the girls’ situation, and has indicated it will do all it can to enable them to join their parents in France. On the practical level, it will not make any move against the girls, who legally-speaking are illegal immigrants.
For now, the Ministry is not issuing the girls with temporary visas on humanitarian grounds, preferring to see what the French authorities will decide to do first.
Meanwhile, the girls have been moved from a protected shelter run by the Welfare Service, and are now staying with a host family. Babette said: “The Welfare Service told us that as the shelter was crowded, we would be better off staying with a family. We feel better here – now we have a room of our own, and it’s much less noisy.”
