‘Free ex-soldiers from Indian hellhole’
PRESSURE was mounting on the Prime Minister last night to urge India to free six jailed British ex-soldiers.
A petition with 405,000 signatures was given to Downing Street yesterday by friends and relatives who say they have been unjustly jailed.
The “Chennai Six” have been held in India for 1,461 days after they were imprisoned on weapons charges while working as anti-piracy security guards on ships.
Ann Towers, the wife of one of the jailed men, said: “That prison is a hellhole.”
Indian coastguards boarded their vessel, the MV Seaman Guard Ohio, in October 2013 and arrested them for taking weapons into India’s territorial waters. The charges were dropped when the men said the weapons were lawfully held. But another court re-opened the case and they were convicted in January last year and jailed for five years.
Yvonne MacHugh, 28, fiancee of Billy Irving, 37, of Oban, western Scotland, a former paratrooper, was accompanied in Downing Street by their two-year-old son William.
Ms MacHugh said the Government’s efforts “aren’t good enough”, adding: “I want them to openly say, ‘We know the men are innocent. Release them now’.”
The five other men are John Armstrong, 30, of Wigton, Cumbria, Nick Dunn, 31, of Ashington, Northumberland, Paul Towers, 54, from Pocklington, East Yorkshire, all former paratroopers, and Nicholas Simpson, 47, of Catterick, North Yorkshire, and Ray Tindall, 42, of Chester, who both served with the 1st Battalion Yorkshire Regiment.
Mrs May raised their plight on a visit to India and Britain’s High Commissioner has visited the men in jail.