Canadian man who swam into US set free

A MAN who said he swam across the Detroit River from Canada to try to deliver handmade books before Christmas won his release on Tuesday after two months in US custody.

Christopher Sagajllo, 56, was arrested in December after crossing the river in a wetsuit and landing at a steel company’s property on Zug Island, just south of Detroit.

US District Judge Linda Parker sentenced Sagajllo to time served, clearing his return to St Catherines, Ontario, where the British native is a permanent Canadian resident.

“He is not a dangerous individual,” defence attorney Benton Martin said. Sagajllo declined to speak in court. But he explained in a letter why he chose a risky way to get into the US.

He said he was desperate after being turned away days earlier at the border in Niagara Falls, New York.

US authorities said he was ineligible because he was deported to the UK in 2010 after overstaying a visit by seven years.

Sagajllo said he followed his religious faith and made books in silk bags.

“Four of the recipients were in the US, and I believed they needed to be delivered before Christmas… “I believed I needed to swim across. “I felt that if I did not do what was, I believe, required of me, that something terrible would happen to me in the future,” he wrote.

Assistant US Attorney Susan Fairchild said the government had no objection to returning Sagajllo to Canada after weeks in custody. | AP