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“I was woken up by a punch in the face. It was the police.”
The respondent is a young algerian man who was travelling alone from Italy to France on the train. He had arrived in the city of Ventimiglia two days before the incident. Since there is no refugee camp or safe sleeping places available for adult men on the move, he did not find any space to sleep before taking the train from Ventimiglia towards Menton in the evening.
Train station near the border police station of the french city Menton
In the station of Menton-Garavan the border police boards the train and finds the young man asleep on a seat. “I was woken up by a punch in the face. It was the police. The police man who punched me screamed at me and dragged me with two others out of the train. This happened very quickly. I was on the platform before I was really awake.” The young man is subsequently taken to the border police station near Menton and locked in a cell without any further explanation of the reason for his detention.
The respondent was locked in a cell with eight other people and released the next morning. The french border police that released him told him to walk up the mountain road to Italy.
legal analysis
The respondent’s account of being detained without legal basis or access to due process constitutes arbitrary detention, which is prohibited under international and regional human rights law (Art. 9 UDHR; Art. 9.1 ICCPR; Art. 5.1 ECHR; Art. 6 EUCFR). The automatic or punitive detention of asylum seekers or persons on the move, particularly without access to legal remedies or information on the reasons for detention, violates these principles. Under international law, detention is arbitrary when it lacks a legal basis, is not necessary or proportionate to a legitimate aim, or is imposed without access to procedural safeguards, including judicial review.
Given the respondent was asleep, the punch cannot be considered as either necessary or proportionate. This violence is in violation of the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment (Art. 5 UDHR, Art. 7 ICCPR, Art. 1 UNCAT, Art. 3 ECHR, Art. 1 and 4 EUCFR).
overview
1 people ,
from Algeria,
aged about 20 years old.