Farmer who smuggled migrants gets light sentence

PARIS— A French farmer who smuggled African migrants to safety, defying authorities in an effort that his supporters likened to the Underground Railroad, was essentially given a slap on the wrist by a court Friday.

Olive farmer Cédric Herrou has become something of a hero after he shepherded migrants across the Italian border and into the Roya Valley of southern France, challenging official policy of rounding up migrants and sending them to detention centres or deporting them.

A court in Nice ordered Herrou on Friday to pay a fine of € 3,000, or about $4,200. If he stays out of trouble for five years, he will not have to pay it.

The relatively light sentence — almost a nonsentence, given that the prosecutor, Jean-Michel Prêtre, had asked for tougher punishment — was an indication of how politically delicate the case against Herrou had become.

At the end of a highly publicized trial last month, Prêtre had requested that Herrou, 37, be sentenced to a suspended eight-month prison term.

A 2012 law allows citizens to help migrants for humanitarian reasons. Before that legislation, such aid could result in a sentence of up to five years and a fine of up to $41,700.

But Prêtre said Herrou’s actions had gone beyond the scope of the law, helping migrants enter the country illegally instead of merely offering them shelter.

At the trial, Prêtre appeared contrite at times that the law had to be applied to Herrou, and he praised the farmer’s cause as “noble.”

Herrou was cleared Friday of the more severe charges of having helped illegal migrants stay on French territory and of having illegally hosted over 50 Eritreans in an abandoned holiday resort.