French police under investigation after 'slashing boat' carrying migrants to UK

Police in France have seemingly slashed a migrant boat with a knife to prevent it from travelling on to the UK - and now the officers involved are facing an investigation by a human rights watchdog. Video footage circulating online appears to show police using a knife to slash a rubber dinghy that got stuck in the sand on a beach near Calais in northern France on Sunday. The dinghy quickly deflated and more than 20 people returned to shore. No one was injured during the incident and water was below knee height when the incident occurred. Migrant charity Utopia 56 have claimed that the incident was illegal and put people's lives in danger as the boat was technically at sea. French police have to follow rules that stop them from intervening once a boat is in the water to prevent putting people at risk. Utopia 56 has filed a report to France’s Defender of Rights, the country’s principal human rights watchdog, and filed a complaint to the IGGN National Gendarmerie Inspectorate, the organisation that investigates complaints against the police. Utopia 56 wrote on Instagram : “This video was shot by one of our volunteers on Sunday at Oye-Plage. “You can see policemen slashing a boat already in the water while people are on board. "This is an extremely dangerous practice for passengers but has been used regularly for several years.” A spokesman for the Pas-de-Calais gendarmerie said the intervention was “entirely within the law” because the boat was essentially on dry land already. "It wasn’t a boat in the water — it had run aground and suffered a flotation failure," the spokesperson said. "Officers neutralised the boat to prevent it from returning to sea and thus avoid further endangering the migrants’ lives during the crossing." The UK and France signed a £660 million deal last month that commits them to intercepting more boats that are launched upstream before they pick up UK-bound migrants. The total number of crossings since the small boats crisis began in 2018 is about 200,000. On Monday, 92 people arrived on two boats, taking the toll to 199,920, the Sun reported. On Sunday, the bodies of a woman and a teenage girl were found on a migrant boat run aground on a French beach. They are believed to have died from crushing or suffocation after the boat’s engine exploded. They were both believed to have been from Sudan.