France-Spain flight row over Jewish teens escalates

The removal of a French group of Jewish teenagers from a flight in Spain last week has prompted a diplomatic row, after their group leader was handcuffed by police and a Spanish minister called them “Israeli brats”.

French government ministers Aurore Bergé and Benjamin Haddad have given a strongly worded statement condemning Spain’s transport minister Óscar Puente’s remarks and the actions of police.

The teenagers and their counsellor were among the group of 44 children and eight adults who were taken off Vueling flight V8166 from Valencia to Paris on 23 July while on their way home from a summer camp.

Vueling says the French group was removed from the flight because of “disruptive behaviour”.

The airline has said it aims “to provide a rigorous and transparent account of the facts”.

However, accounts of what happened before the incident differ dramatically, and have led to allegations of antisemitism, which have been vehemently rejected by both the airline and Spanish police.

Videos on social media showed police holding the female counsellor down on the ground in a corridor while they handcuffed her.

The two French ministers, who have both since spoken to the woman, said she had been signed off work for 15 days because of “temporary incapacity”.

“No act justifies the disembarkation and the excessive and brutal use of force by the Guardia Civil against the young woman,” said Bergé and Haddad.

Although Óscar Puente later deleted his post describing the teenagers as “Israeli brats”, the French ministers said they strongly condemned his statement for “equating French children who were Jewish with Israeli citizens, as if this in any way justified the treatment they were subjected to”.

“We will never accept the trivialisation of anti-Semitism,” the ministers added.

Police said the captain had ordered the removal of the group from the Vueling plane after they had ignored instructions from the crew.

The airline has given two statements since the events unfolded a week ago.

It alleged that the group had “mishandled emergency equipment and actively disrupted the mandatory safety demonstration, repeatedly ignoring instructions from cabin crew”.

Vueling said that as part of its internal inquiry it had taken witness statements from other passengers who had backed up its account and that of the police.

It accused some of the children of adopting “confrontational behaviour”… such as “attempting to loosen life jackets, tampering with overhead oxygen masks and removing a high-pressure oxygen cylinder”, violating air safety laws.

An anonymous passenger gave a statement to Spain’s La Sexta TV appearing to back up Vueling’s statement, saying that some of the children had pulled life jackets out and pressed the crew-call buttons.

However, other accounts have disputed the airline’s version of events.

One passenger called Damien, who was at the front of the plane and not part of the young group, told Europe 1 radio that the children had been “very calm, especially for teenagers… there was one who called to his friend for two seconds but everything was perfectly fine”.

Karine Lamy, the mother of a teenage boy in the group, told i24 TV that “one child sang a song in Hebrew, then he began shouting and the staff on board came up to him and the group leader and warned him immediately that if he carried on singing or making a noise they’d call the police”.

She said the children then calmed down and five minutes later the police boarded the plane and told the leader and the whole group to disembark.

According to Damien, a flight attendant said during the safety demonstration that there was a security issue and that they were going to call police.

“There was no shouting, no violence,” he insisted, adding that he had no idea whether there had been any interruption to the safety demonstration as everyone was paying attention to it at the time.

A lawyer for the Club Kineret summer camp group, Murielle Ouknine-Melki, told French TV that some of the children wore a kippah (Jewish skullcap) and she had no other explanation for what happened other than that they were Jewish.

Vueling said it categorically denied that its crew’s behaviour related to the religion of the passengers. The Guardia Civil said its officers too were not aware they were Jewish.

At the weekend, France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, contacted Vueling’s chief executive, Carolina Martinoli, to express his “deep concern” at what had happened.