Ex-soldier faces jail for ‘crime of compassion’

> Briton tried to smuggle four-year-old Afghan girl out of French camp

LONDON: A former British soldier is facing up to five years in a French jail for what he says was a crime of compassion in trying to smuggle a girl out of the squalid Jungle camp near Calais.

Rob Lawrie, 49, said his paternal instinct kicked in when he was asked to smuggle Bahar Ahmadi, four, into Britain and take her to relatives who are living in the country legally.

But after being caught at Calais border control, he now faces a charge of aiding illegal immigration, which under French law carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine.

“I know I have committed a crime but all I am guilty of is compassion,” Lawrie said.

“I just couldn’t leave Bahar to spend one more night in that horrendous place.

“And when you have seen what I have seen there all rational thought goes out of your head.”

Lawrie said Bahar was one of the first people he met after he started to transport aid to the camp and stayed there to build shelters for refugees.

He said his aid work began after he saw the picture of Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi’s body on The Independent’s front page.

“The picture destroyed me. I packed up my carpet cleaning business, sold the family people carrier and bought a transit van. I appealed for stuff to take to Calais and got absolutely swamped with clothing, sleeping bags and tents.”

While sharing a shelter with refugees there, he met Bahar.

“She started following me everywhere. She was just an innocent little girl who had lost the ‘birth lottery’.”

He said he was told that the girl’s mother had been “lost in Afghanistan” and she was living in the camp with her father Reza.

Lawrie described the camp’s conditions as “horrendous” and that it reminded him of “Mumbai rubbish tips”.

Bahar had relatives who have been legally settled in Leeds, and Reza repeatedly asked Lawrie to smuggle his daughter into Britain to live with them.

Lawrie initially refused, but on the night of Oct 24, he relented.

Lawrie – who neither requested nor received money for his actions – hid Bahar above the driver’s seat, in one of his van’s storage compartments.

Unbeknown to him, two Eritreans had hidden themselves in the back of his van and were sniffed out by border control dogs, leading to Lawrie’s arrest and Bahar’s returned to the camp.

“I am a 49-year-old ex-soldier. I can handle what life throws at me. My concern is for Bahar, and children like her,” he said. – The Independent