Migrant smuggle footballer is jailed
FOOTBALLER Fabrice LokemboLokaso has been jailed for trying to smuggle ten Afghan migrants into England.
The Belgian striker, 33, was stopped by French port police as he prepared to drive a furniture van on to a Dover-bound ferry at Dunkirk.
Four men, four children and two women, including a pregnant mum-to-be, were found inside.
Prosecutor Eric Fouard told Dunkirk district court Lokembo-Lokaso picked up the migrants at the notorious Jungle refugee camp near Calais.
He said: “This isn’t the first smuggling attempt of this type, but 10 migrants at one time is a lot.”
Congo-born LokemboLokaso told the judge: “A guy in Brussels called TARGET: Dunkirk ferry Malik invited me to deliver some furniture to England, and I had no idea what the van contained.
“When I reached Calais another man, named Al, told me what was going on and offered me 1,000 euros per head to transport these ten people.
“Everything happened very quickly. I have a lot of debts, I am under pressure, so I said I would do it.
“I had never done anything similar before, and I am very sorry as that’s not the sort of person I am.”
Lokembo-Lokaso previously served three months in jail for drugs offences in 2012.
The footballer, who has played for Belgian side Charleroi and clubs in Israel and Cyprus, was jailed for 10 months.
He will be deported after his sentence and banned from re-entering France for three years. MORE than 5,000 Syrians have been caught entering the UK illegally in the past three-and-a-half years.
The shocking figures will raise fears that terrorists posing as refugees have sneaked in.
Last week a Syrian refugee hacked to death a pregnant woman with a meatcleaver in a horror attack in Germany.
Information obtained by the Daily Star Sunday shows the number of illegal immigrants entering Britain from the war-torn country is increasing at an alarming rate.
Last year 2,227 paperless Syrians were arrested and held in the UK – around 42 a week, a freedom of information request revealed.
The figure is up from 1,442 the previous year and just 882 in 2013. At least 1,000 more are already believed to have been arrested and detained this year.
In October alone last year, two months before the UK launched its first air strikes on the country, 509 Syrians were arrested.
In February 2012, the corresponding number was just seven, indicating the scale of the influx.
By December last year, 70% of Syrian illegals had been granted temporary admission or release by immigrant chiefs and are feared to have gone missing.