NO PREVIOUS INDICTMENT IS NEEDED
DETAINED IN PRISONS

A handing over or administrative expelling does not need a previous indictment. It usually takes place with prisoners immediately after they have served their time, sentenced by French courts, and not having any open procedure against them, they are detained inside the French prisons a few minutes before they are freed.

Then, they are taken to to border with the Spanish state, where they are handed over to the Guardia Civil or the Spanish police, detained and incommunicated for a period of up to five full days.

During this period of incommunication, the prisoners, undergoing severe tortures, sign self-incriminatory declarations needed to be processed and therefore, not having any open procedure against them, they become prisoners formally accused of supposed offences, in some cases sentenced with decades in the Spanish prisons.

Administrative expelling or handing over from one police force to another police force, is absolutely illegal and this procedure is not included in any legal code. Besides, this procedure violates Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights which states: "Nobody will be hander over to a country where he or she is liable to suffer torture and mishandling", and this possibility is the sad reality of the Spanish state, with 127 persons having denunciated tortures or mishandling only in 2002. This is what awaits practically all the expelled refugees.

We also wish to denounce that the French state "forgets" to make use of its own legal procedures. Many administrative Courts of Justice in France have declared illegal the handing over of Basque subjects. In spite of this, the French state continues to use this tractice.

From the experience of hundreds of persons handed over or expelled, we are in a position to affirm that the following irregularities have been committed:

- Detention within the jail by the French police of a citizen who has served his full period of sentence.

- Impossibility to appeal against an administrative decission such as expulsion, a right duly incorporated in the French laws. Basque prisoners are notified the administrative decission at the very moment when they are handed over at the border to the Spanish police, which prevents them to appeal against this decission and avoid the expulsion.

- The right of free movement within the European Union is violated.

- The expulsion to a country, where Basque citizens abroad do not want to go.

- The tortures and mishandling at the hands of the Guardia Civil and the Spanish police.