Rapist deported from UK tried to return by dinghy

AN AFGHAN migrant who tried to board a small boat to the UK this week has already been deported from England for raping a schoolgirl.

Emal Kochai was jailed in 2014 after raping a 12-year-old girl in Reading, and was returned to Afghanistan in 2019, having served half of his nine-year sentence.

But the 28-year-old is now living in a French migrant camp waiting for his chance to board a small boat across the Channel. On Monday morning, he tried to board a vessel but said police arrived and punctured the boat with a knife.

Speaking from the Grand-Synthe camp near Dunkirk, Kochai told The Times that he was trying to get back to the UK illegally and that he had ‘changed his ways’.

He said: ‘I don’t like telling people about it because they get the wrong idea about me. It was all a misunderstanding.

‘I have learnt now, I want to do something better. I had a hard life in prison and want to change my ways.’

Kochai said he was 15 when he arrived in the UK and was eventually taken in by a foster family in Hungerford, Berkshire.

Five years later he was found guilty of raping the 12-year-old girl, an offence he denied. After his deportation to Afghanistan, Kochai managed to flee and said he travelled through Iran, Pakistan and Turkey to make his way to France.

A Home Office source said: ‘This case shows exactly why we need genuine deterrent measures in place to stop rapists and other serious criminals illegally entering the UK.’