FRENCH government attempts to crack down on illegal African immigrants ran into legal difficulties yesterday, as courts released most of the 210 immigrants arrested in a church on Friday.
The immigrants had been occupying the church in northern Paris for more than seven weeks, and 10 of them were on their 50th day of hunger strike in a campaign for legal papers, when riot police moved in.
But by last night about 200 of the immigrants were regrouped in a theatre in Vincennes, east of Paris, after courts ruled there were procedural errors in a decision to hold them in a detention centre in Vincennes. This centre is normally used to hold immigrants before they are deported.
The immigration adviser to the Interior Minister, Mr Jean Louis Debre, said he now expected two thirds of those who occupied the church to be legalised.
At the Vincennes theatre yesterday an immigrants' spokesman called for public support, as some of those released may yet be rearrested and deported.
Mr Doro Traore, a Mauritanian who arrived in France eight years ago, said the fight would continue and asked for donations of food and blankets.
The 10 hunger strikers have now ended their fast and are being cared for in another theatre by doctors from Medecins du Monde. Their condition was said to be improving.
Just four of the immigrants who occupied the St Bernard Church have so far been deported. They were taken back to Mali in west Africa on a French military airbus on Saturday, along with 53 other illegal immigrants from Mali, Senegal, Zaire and Gabon.
There was strong reaction to the deportation in the Malian capital, Banako. Maintenance workers refused to service the aircraft when it landed. In a statement, their union said the methods used to deport the passengers were "degrading and humiliating for the whole of Africa".
Archbishop Luc Auguste Sangare of Banako accused France yesterday of suffering from a "loss of memory" over its ties with Mali.
Meanwhile, President Jacques Chirac said controversial immigration laws introduced by the conservative French government in 1993 and 1994 would have to be adjusted.