FRENCH police have begun a joint investigation with their Italian and Spanish counterparts aimed at breaking a Madrid-based group which is bringing Romanians to Ireland.
Investigations are centered on a syndicate which is believed to be ferrying eastern Europeans from Spain to Dublin on ferries from Roscoff, France, to Cork and to other Irish ports via the UK. More than 400 Romanians registered here as asylum-seekers last year, and 207 in the first quarter of this year.
Police in Morlaix, Brittany, questioned six couples arrested last month at Roscoff as they were about to sail for Cork. The Romanians were carrying stolen Spanish passports bought in Madrid for 15,000 pesetas (£70).
At a special court hearing the 12 adults were remanded in custody pending their trial. No date has been fixed for the hearing. The court spokesman refused to comment.
But a police source has revealed that the French want to try to establish the identities of the Romanians, to find out how they came to acquire their false papers and why the Spanish syndicate sent them to Dublin as a final destination in their flight from poverty and repression in their country of origin.
The Morlaix police have also completed warrant formalities to enable their officers to travel to Spain and Italy for their enquiries.
Some of the 17 children of the adults held in custody in Brittany have also been questioned. Many were said to be fluent in Spanish as well as Romanian, suggesting that they had spent some time in Spain.
In France there is concern at the plight of the children who have been separated from their parents since May 16th.
Josiane Gueguen, a journalist at the French regional daily Ouest France, said that the 17 children are being kept in three state run homes whilst their parents await trial. The youngest is a baby of less than a month old and six of the other 16 are less than six years old.
Human rights groups, and at least one French trade union, have also raised protests. One women's group accused the French authorities of "having brutally weaned a breast-fed baby of less than a month old from its mother's milk".
The French police are said to be particularly interested in a mass theft of documents which took place in Naples some months ago. A group of Romanian women were found to be carrying some of the stolen papers when they were arrested at Cherbourg in a separate incident last month.