WE LOST HIM SO QUICKLY ...IT WAS DARK... THEN HE WAS GONE
Heart-rending words of friends who watched the nightmare unfold
PICTURED for the first time, this is the migrant who tragically drowned while making his third attempt to cross the Channel and reach Britain.
Abdulfatah Hamdallah died after the 3ft dinghy he and a friend were in was punctured by the shovels they were using as oars.
His friend somehow survived. But Mr Hamdallah, from Sudan, could not swim and his body was later found washed up on a beach at Sangatte.
Friends at a makeshift camp he stayed at in Calais have shared images of the former student with the Mail in the hope of highlighting the human cost of the crossings crisis.
They revealed the tragedy unfolded nearly a mile out to sea after the pair set off in their dinghy, which they stole from a shack, at about 1am on Wednesday. Gamr Alsha, 18, told how he set off alongside Mr Hamdallah, also known as Wajdi, in a different, more sturdy and bigger boat which was carrying eight people.
But as both vessels got nearly a mile out to sea, Mr Hamdallah’s dinghy burst when he and his friend rotated their makeshift oars backwards.
Mr Alsha said: ‘As they put the spade in a motion to sweep the water behind them, the edge of it cut into the dinghy. He tried to clutch on to the boat but he couldn’t make it.
‘We lost him quickly. The water was quite still, but it was dark.
‘At that point we didn’t want to continue. We turned our own boat back to the beach to get help but the police and lifeguards could not find him. They used torches but he was gone. Then they found him on the beach [seven hours later] in the morning.
‘Before the boat sank he was happy, saying “I want to arrive in England”.
‘Wajdi said he had a bad life in Sudan. He said there were lots of problems.
‘He tried to reach England by boat two times before. I have tried four times.’
Asked if his friend’s death would deter him from trying to reach Britain, he added: ‘If I found a boat again or had a chance to get to the UK, I would.
‘It’s a bad life in France. It’s my dream to get to the UK. In the UK I will find my life. Since I was small I wanted to go to England. In Sudan there are too many problems. What else am I going to do? If I was back in Sudan I would be dead by now.’
Friends also told how Mr Hamdallah fled his home near Darfur in the Sudan, in 2018 as a result of the civil war there.
He is said to have spent many months in a migrant camp in Libya after travelling north through Africa. Mr Hamdallah then made it to Italy last year after crossing the Mediterranean by boat before marching through the Alps into France.
He spent some months in Paris and Nantes and reached Calais between two and four months ago, friends said.
Initially, France’s citizenship minister said he was 16 years old. But authorities yesterday said he was in fact 28 after identity documents they found suggested he was much older. A French official confirmed his name was Abdulfatah
Hamdallah, but friends said he was also known as Wajdi Hamdallah Hammad. Tributes continued to pour in on his Facebook profile yesterday. French prosecutor Philippe Sabatier also confirmed the authorities did not believe the fatal attempted crossing was orchestrated by smugglers. He said: ‘No link has been established between them and any people smuggling network in the sense that their attempted crossing corresponds to a personal initiative.’
The friend of Mr Hamdallah’s who survived is in the care of French social services.
Several migrants languishing in camps in Calais yesterday told the Mail how more are attempting Channel crossings because security has been tightened at ports where people used to stow away on cars and lorries. Many don’t have the money demanded by ruthless traffickers for more seaworthy boats and are increasingly risking the perilous journey across the world’s busiest shipping lane in ramshackle vessels.
These can be dinghies or even kayaks, either bought cheaply from local stores or stolen. Ahmad Ali, 17, who sleeps in a tent at a camp among scrublands and trees on the outskirts of Calais, where Mr Hamdallah also stayed, said: ‘Wajdi was a nice man. It’s very sad and very tragic. People try many, many times here to get to England.
‘I tried to get into a car, but this is more difficult now so many people try by boat.’ Jhad Mohammad, 22, said: ‘People here want to try and get to England.
‘Hiding in a car has become more difficult. They’ll search more
in the port here so there is no chance. People are trying by dinghy or other things.’
Zuma Ali, 17, said: ‘People want to get to the UK. France isn’t any good. If you stay in France you can’t get a house, you can’t get much food. Everybody in the camps here is sad. It is our dream to go to England.’
The tragedy has sparked a major row over the Government’s handling of the crisis, which has seen record numbers cross the Channel in small boats this year.
Almost 5,000 migrants have made the 21-mile crossing in small craft, compared with just 1,850 during the whole of last year.
Natalie Elphicke, the MP for Dover, said that the death was a wake- up call and that more needed to be done to curb the attempted crossings.
She told the Mail: ‘ That this young man from Sudan who cannot swim drowns in the English Channel, having been safe on land in numerous countries, including France, shows that the current international asylum conventions are not working and are failing people in need.
‘We must urgently put a stop to the crossings, the Calais migrant magnet, and tackle the people traffickers who lie at the heart of this crisis, before any more lives are lost attempting this perilous crossing.’ Tim Loughton MP, who sits on the parliamentary home affairs committee, told the Mail: ‘This is a really tragic case, but with the numbers currently trying to get across such a busy and dangerous shipping lane it is a miracle that there have not been more casualties.
‘Alas this trade in human misery will go on until the French acknowledge that the only way to halt it is by making it a sure thing that any boats in the water will be turned round and the passengers landed back in France.
‘It beggars belief that French politicians are trying to dump the blame on Britain when the real lack of humanity comes from a government which continues to allow people to risk their lives in this way and – incredibly – fails to take responsibility for very vulnerable children at large around Calais. Trying to make a French problem a British problem does not solve the problem and helps no one.’
Home secretary Priti Patel has pledged to make the Channel crossings ‘unviable’.
Yesterday Dan O’Mahoney, the Home Office’s newly appointed Clandestine Channel Threat Commander’, was back in France to continue discussions with officials in Paris and Calais in a bid to tackle the crisis.