NICE, France, 13 September 2006 — A conservative mayor in southern France has been sent for trial for refusing to officiate at the marriage of an illegal Tunisian immigrant and a French woman, a judicial source said yesterday.
Jacques Senequier, mayor of the picturesque town of Cogolin, told the couple he didn’t want to marry them because the man did not have residency papers and suggested it was just a marriage of convenience.
“They tell me on the one hand to fight against illegal immigration and on the other hand they tell me to marry people who have not been regularized. It is abnormal and incomprehensible,” Senequier told Reuters. However, a lawyer for the couple denied it was a marriage of convenience, saying the lovers, named as Mohamed and Jennifer, lived together in Cogolin and were expecting a baby.
“The freedom to marry a foreigner is not dependent on whether they have residency papers,” said lawyer Jamel Guesmi. Mohamed came to France in 2003 on a student visa and stayed on after it expired. Subsequent applications for residency were rejected by local authorities. Senequier is scheduled to stand trial today.
If the court finds him guilty of failing in his mayoral duties it could force him to pay damages to the couple and order him to marry the pair. Senequier is a member of the ruling UMP party, whose leader, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, has launched a crackdown on illegal immigration, ordering the expulsion of thousands of families without residency papers.
