Judo gold medallist who smuggled 18 migrants for £90,000 on a sinking boat
THIS is the ‘grossly overladen’ dinghy which sank as two British men tried to smuggle 18 migrants across the Channel at night for £90,000.
Robert Stilwell, a former judo gold medallist, and accomplice Mark Stribling are visible in bright pink life jackets, in stark contrast to their helpless passengers who had no protection.
Yesterday Stilwell, 33, was jailed for four years for his part in the bungled operation to bring the Albanians illegally into Britain.
The pair had to be rescued along with 15 men, one woman and two children who were packed into the boat – which started to sink after it ran out of fuel, the motor failed and water started to flood in.
A judge said the enterprise showed the ‘best and the worst of human characteristics’ as lifeboat crews risked their lives to save the migrants from drowning in rough seas, while the two boatmen laughed and joked as they were rescued.
Father-of-one Stilwell shouted ‘I love you’ to his family as he was led to the cells, while his tattooed childhood friend Stribling, 35, laughed at his sentence and winked at the public gallery. The pair claimed they were
‘Treated like cargo’
only paid £2,000 each for the trip but Judge Jeremy Carey dismissed this figure as ‘ inconceivable’. He said they charged around £5,000 – £90,000 in total – for transporting the 18 migrants.
Footage from a rescue helicopter shows how the two people smugglers were kept safe in life jackets and waterproofs, while the terrified Albanians, said to be in a ‘desperate state’ without any protection, were treated like ‘cargo’.
The judge said ‘tragedy was only avoided by a whisker’. Stilwell and Stribling are thought to have bought a boat on eBay for just £3,000 days before they were caught.
The boat ran into trouble not long after it left Calais on the night of May 28. The motor failed and the boat drifted into the world’s busiest shipping lane in gale-force winds a mile and a half off the Kent coastline near Dymchurch.
Three hours later, when they were rescued, one woman was suffering from hypothermia and feared she would have died if she had remained there for another ten minutes.
The passengers were only saved when the coastguard was alerted after the panic-stricken migrants phoned their families who had remained behind in Calais.
When the smugglers were questioned by Border Force officers, they claimed they had rescued the migrants after spotting them while they were out fishing.
But the migrants later told how they threatened to throw them overboard or puncture the boat if they called police.
Yesterday the judge told the pair, who had no sailing experience, that they had shown ‘greed, recklessness and deceit in a desire to get easy money.’
Stilwell’s sentencing marks the downfall of a man who was once a promising athlete.
As a youth, he took gold at the 2000 Commonwealth Championships and won several European and British medals.
But at the age of 21 the black belt had to retire after a serious injury left him with a crushed vertebrae.
He became addicted to cocaine and embarked on a life of crime, racking up convictions for theft, threatening behaviour, fraud and criminal damage within months of retiring from the sport.
After he was caught, Stilwell’s exgirlfriend told the Mail: He’s very simple, he definitely has Asperger’s. That’s why he got away with so much. I thought he was destined for good things.
‘It’s stupid he would ruin his life like that.’
Stilwell was jailed for four years and four months, while Stribling, who has previous convictions for robbery and drugs, received four years and eight months at Maidstone Crown Court.
The pair pleaded guilty to people smuggling at a previous hearing.