Stowaway migrants who picked the wrong coach!
They hide in bus taking former detectives back to Britain from France... then clamber out to find they’re in a police sports club
‘You could not make it up’
AFTER spending two days hiding in a coach full of pensioners bound for Britain, the pair of Sudanese migrants hoped their flight from the authorities was over.
There was just one problem. The pensioners were actually a group of retired detectives – and their final destination was a sports club belonging to Scotland Yard.
When the two stowaways started to clamber out of their hiding spot, a former sergeant pulled them out and told them: ‘You’re nicked.’
The incident unfolded on Monday after the 22 former officers and their partners returned from a four-day trip to mark the centenary of the battles of Passchendaele and Arras.
Retired sergeant Jonathan Nicholls believes the men crept inside the coach in Arras in northern France on Saturday.
They hid in a compartment next to the engine and were not spotted when the coach was searched by officials at the Eurotunnel terminal in Calais two days later.
After they were found by the passengers – some of who served on the Met’s Flying Squad – at the sports club in Hertfordshire they were taken to Hatfield police station, where they remain in custody.
Mr Nicholls, 68, told the Daily Mail: ‘It’s ridiculous – we didn’t know they were there all that time.
‘But they played a bad card getting out at a police club. They were immediately surrounded by former officers and detained by Her Majesty’s best. I told them, “You’ve made a big mistake, you’re on police property”. You could not make it up – of all the coaches they picked a police one, and ended up at a police club.
‘But it’s a bit embarrassing because we are all police on this coach ... You have to see the funny side I suppose.’
Mr Nicholls runs a group called Hampstead Pals, which has completed 68 trips to the former battlefields.
‘We were searched at the Eurotunnel terminal but clearly they didn’t do a very good job,’ he said. ‘ They searched the coach and the luggage compartment but they didn’t find anything. They were in the engine compartment.
‘At Calais, they are quick enough to check how many cigarettes you’ve got and what chocolate you brought. But they failed to do their job properly and arrest the two immigrants at the back of the coach.’
The stowaways told the retired officers they had crossed the Mediterranean on an old fishing boat and then walked to France on foot. They were given food and water at the Met’s sports club in Bushey before being arrested.
Mr Nicholls added: ‘They had gone without water for two days and they were filthy. You can’t help but feel sorry for them. It’s a sorry sight ... They were smiling because they had made it to the UK – even if it was to the Met sports club.’ The men will now be assessed by Immigration Enforcement officials. Dozens of migrants are reaching Britain from northern Franceclaims the every crisis week ended despite with official the evacuation of the Jungle camp in Calais a year ago.
Up to 100 migrants arrive in Calais and Dunkirk each week and a similar number made it across the channel to Britain, according to Calais charity L’Auberge des Migrants. In May about 700 migrants were found hiding in lorries in Calais, according to French police unions. By August the figure had risen to 1,600.