An MP for Rennes has proposed to bring over police officers from Morocco to help identify and deal with underage migrants who have formed criminal gangs operating in the French city.
The proposal is being spearheaded by French MP for Ille-et-Vilaine Mustapha Laabid, a member of President Emmanuel Macron’s La République En Marche! (LREM/The Republic on the Move), who says the Moroccan police could greatly aid the work of local police forces, Ouest France reports.
According to Mr Laabid, the new proposal would “approach the reception of foreign minors isolated in France differently. In particular, we are working with Morocco to ensure that the experimentation taking place in Paris can be extended to Rennes and elsewhere.”
A similar project was approved in Paris earlier this year after the French and Moroccan governments came to an agreement on more intensive cooperation on tackling Moroccan gangs operating in the country.
“Morocco has already given me its approval,” Laabid said, and added: “And I have an appointment with the Minister of the Interior this week.”
Rennes public prosecutor Nicolas Jacquet explained the problems with the underage migrants in the city saying: “They commit crimes repeatedly.”
“The difficulty is that there is a permanent renewal of these young people. Those of this summer are not the same as those we questioned at the beginning of the year,” he added.
Underage migrants without identification papers have also become a major issue in Germany where several high-profile crimes have been committed by men claiming to be underage including the rape and murder of student Maria Ladenburger in 2016.
France has also seen adults posing as underage migrants. Earlier this year in April, police in Montpellier uncovered a network of migrants from the Ivory Coast who were forging documents in order to help others claim they were underage. The arrests came after officials noticed five migrants with nearly identical documents in Hérault.
In total, the network managed to defraud French taxpayers of nearly a million euros.
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