http://www.asemana.cv/article-imprim.php3?id_article=20622

27-10-06

The young Cape Verdean male deported from France some two weeks ago, 23-year-old Nelson Rodrigues Oliveira, was expelled from the European country for providing false information to the French police. This, at least, is the official version of the incident, according to sources with Cape Verde’s National Police. The young man arrived in Cape Verde on Sunday, October 15, accompanied by two French police officers, and accused the French police of abuse and mistreatment in deporting him to his home country.

Sources at the National Police informed A Semana Online that the young man, who answers to the name Nelson Ridrigues Oliveira, was apparently expelled from France for providing French police officers with a false name during a traffic stop. This is the version told by the French police, and comes to light after the young man spoke with the Cape Verdean media and called his deportation unfair.

Approached by two French police officers, Nelson, who had been living in Paris for two years, gave them a name that, they later discovered, was not his. Sources with knowledge of the case here in Cape Verde confirm this version of the facts as well.

In his initial interview with the Cape Verdean media, the young man accused the police of wrongdoing, and went as far as to suggest that the case was one of discrimination, as, according to him, they never gave him the chance to prove that he was a legal resident in France and that he possessed a driver’s license. “I just didn’t have my documents with me at the time,” he explained, saying that he had “left them at my work place, at a Chantier construction site.”

Nelson’s case is not the only one involving Cape Verdeans in France. In the last ten days alone, three other émigrés were deported from the country - two males from the island of Santiago and one female from São Vicente, all three of whom were apparently living there illegally. At least one of them had resided in France for as long as seven years. According to A Semana Online’s source, “authorities are closing in on illegal immigrants and are not in the mood for considerations.”

Cape Verdean citizens are deported from the United States and Portugal rather often, and less frequently from countries such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

The young man, according to information from the Institute of Communities, is currently on the island of Santiago in the care of a family friend, who is helping him with his documentation in an attempt to return to Portugal, where several of his siblings live.