French police attacked in Guinea while expelling two immigrants

The two sans-papiers had begun a hunger strike two months earlier in Lille (in northern France) in a desperate attempt to obtain the right to stay in France. Threatened with expulsion, they participated in the occupation of a local trade union building in Lille.

After the occupation was broken up, the two workers were taken back to Guinea by a specialised team of police made up of six members of the Border Patrol Force (Police Aux Frontières—PAF). On their arrival in the Guinean capital of Conakry, the two men accused the police of treating them inhumanely. Their assertions were supported by several passengers.

As they got off the plane in Conakry on August 16, in addition to the crowd that turned out to support them, Guinean police also intervened in their favour. According to an August 23 article on the Nouvel Observateur Internet site, “a signed interrogation statement by the PAF” recorded that “the six police officers concerned claimed that they had been received in Conakry by a reception committee that ‘included two Guinean police officers’