Gallie: What do we know about this photo on the front page of English tabloids, which shows French police officers releasing immigrants?

“Yet they have done nothing”. After sinking in the English Channel on Wednesday evening, at least 27 people were killed as they tried to reach the English coast, all of them passing by the buck. Critics say the British failed to stop the French from trying to cross over, while the French criticize the British for not cooperating enough.

These diplomatic tensions continued in the English newspapers on Thursday morning. In particular you can see a photo on the first page of all the tabloids, where we see 4×4 police officers shown in French, parked on the beach, helping to launch the inflatable boat of immigrants who want to cross the channel. This can be seen in the editions of the day Metro, From The sun Entitled “Shame”, From Daily Express And you Daily Mail. In its online version, The newspaper then blames the French police patrol, but “Stand still” And do nothing “To prevent more crossroads today”, The day after the shipwreck. In the first edition, which was constantly updated throughout the morning, the Daily Mail Read as follows: “They haven’t done anything yet”, “They haven’t done anything yet”.

Publishing about thirty films, The Daily Mail Writes that online “Small groups of French police were spotted patrolling the beaches near Calais this morning, but large numbers of rubber dinghies could not prevent them from leaving for England.” The scene mentioned by the newspaper can be seen in the tweet above, but it only shows a police patrol with no one else on the horizon. In this context, one might reasonably wonder when the photo of a police car and a migrant boat came from the front page of an entire English newspaper. Before the sinking that took place on Wednesday afternoon, or this Thursday morning? In fact, many elements converge towards Wednesday morning, i.e. just hours before the tragedy.

Contacted, National Police say they were initially unable to date the film. “British newspapers are still in the industry for obvious reasons as far as we know. We can not say that our relations are in good shape in this regard. Colleagues take their photos every day.” Refers to the nearest source. She confirms that this is actually a French 4×4, but warns “Optical effect” In this picture, which shows the police stationed two meters away from the immigrants: “The car is four times bigger than the boat. So it’s a lot farther than it is in this picture.”

It does not say when or how this photo was taken. An initial answer Is brought to us by The sun, The title of which is: “Do nothing. The day before yesterday, French police noticed more than 40 immigrants going to sea in a rubber boat.” We found his photographer. Gonzalo Fuentes works for the Reuters agency and confirms he took this photo Wednesday morning while on the Dunes de la Slack beach in Wimereux, just above the town of Boulogne-sur-Mer. In addition, no other clich published at this time by the British press can be attested Daily Mail, The police are constantly on patrol, allowing immigrants to try to cross. This did not exclude patrols from using British press releases in the days following the sinking to “let it go”.

If asked about this, this police source goes on to describe the conditions of intervention on the northern coasts, where attempts to cross are observed every day: “We’re on an identification control system and expect people to leave it. But as soon as they get out of the water, if there are 27 people in a canoe, you can imagine children and two police officers telling them to stop. Imagine … we’m blocking the boat, the passengers. They are drowning and it is our responsibility to protect the lives of any police officer. ”

There were 31,500 attempts to move to the UK and 7,800 migrants rescued in 2021 were registered by the Maritime Province last Friday. Now, 30 people have died trying to cross the channel since the beginning of the year.

Do you want to ask us questions or do you want to provide us with information that you think is unreliable? Feel free to write to us at [email protected]. You can find us on Twitter: Our team is behind the rif verif_TF1LCI account.