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France: Paris nightmare

01 January 1991

France: Paris nightmare
artdoc August=1992

CARF no 8, May/June 1992
[Campaign Against Racism and Fascism]

Imagine detectives bursting into your Paris hotel room on the
second day of your honeymoon. Imagine being pushed on to the
bed, having your room ransacked and passports seized, before
being taken, handcuffed, to the police station. At the
station, while you are being interrogated, without an
interpreter, without legal representation and without being
allowed to make a phone call, your husband is accused of theft
at the hotel and other hotels in the area.

This is no imaginary scenario but exactly what happened to a
Manchester couple, Tanya Bougdah and her Algerian-born husband
Houcine, when they were on their honeymoon in Paris. After
three hours under arrest (all the time in handcuffs), the
couple was released.

`We were told by the hotel manager', says Tanya Bougdah,`that
on the morning of our arrest, two officers came to our hotel
asking to see a list of all arrivals on the 24th as they were
looking for someone, travelling by himself, in connection with
a series of thefts. They went down the list, stopped at our
name, Bougdah, and said that's who they wanted. The hotel
explained that Mr Bougdah was travelling with his wife on a
package holiday from England, booked six months ago, and that
it couldn't be us as we had not arrived in the country until
Tuesday evening. To which they replied, "That doesn't matter,
we'll take them anyway." '

The couple took down the details of the arresting officer and
contacted the British embassy. Now, thanks to the efforts of
Glyn Ford MEP, who has taken up their case, the French
government has promised an inquiry. Is this the kind of
treatment that black community nationals travelling throughout
the EC on holiday can expect in the new united Europe?