Immigrant walks through Chunnel from France to UK
Sudanese arrested 11 hours after entering tunnel
AN ILLEGAL immigrant has walked through the Channel Tunnel from Calais to Britain, it emerged last night.
Abdul Rahman Haroun, 40, is believed to be the first person to complete the perilous 31-mile journey – longer than a marathon.
After evading hundreds of security cameras and police officers at the tunnel’s entrance in Calais, the exhausted intruder was spotted by British security guards 11 hours later, just yards from the exit in Folkestone, Kent.
He risked his life dodging high-speed trains and potentially fatal electrical currents, with Eurotunnel previously warning that anyone trying to walk along the train lines would almost certainly die.
Haroun, from Sudan, faces a prison sentence after being charged with obstructing a train. He is, however, still able to claim asylum.
The ease with which he avoided police and Eurotunnel officials on Tuesday will again raise serious questions about the migrant chaos at the French border. MPs last night described security at the tunnel entrance in Calais as ‘very disturbing’.
A source close to Eurotunnel said the company was dealing with up to 1,000 ‘migrant incursions’ a day. He added: ‘Most are apprehended before they enter the tunnel and they don’t get far if they make it inside. The French don’t prosecute, however.’
Haroun’s decision to undertake the potentially fatal journey on foot is further evidence of the extraordinary lengths migrants are willing to go.
A security source said Haroun’s venture through the tunnel acted as a ‘snapshot of how badly the French authorities have handled the situation’.
‘It is absolutely remarkable he was able to get through when you consider that the tunnel is 50km long,’ he said.
‘He would have had to dodge trains and duck and dive, so it is quite the achievement.’
Haroun’s j ourney began at 7.30am on Tuesday when a security alert was triggered close to the entrance of one of the two train tunnels in Coquelles, near Calais. The entrance was immediately shut as Eurotunnel sent security guards to join police officers in detecting the intruders. But despite the search, the migrant was able to make his way into the tunnel without further detection.
The tunnel closure left holidaymakers and haulage firms stranded for hours, but the only excuse offered by Eurotunnel was that the issue had been caused by an ‘anomaly’.
It was only after Haroun was charged in the UK yesterday that the company admitted its part in the migrant’s easy passage into the tunnel.
After evading t he i niti al attempts to find him, Haroun was able to make his way through the 31-mile tunnel in complete darkness as trains hurtled past at more than 100mph.
He was forced to bear incredibly high temperatures, altered air pressure and roaring noise from trains as he walked along the narrow walkways at either side of the tracks. The walkways are designed for emergency evacuation when no trains are running, and he would only have been able to grab a handrail on the tunnel wall to stop himself being dragged under a passing train.
When his presence triggered an alarm at the tunnel’s halfway mark, the French sent a test-train equipped with strong lights to find him. It failed, however, and he was eventually arrested after being detected on a camera after crossing on to English territory.
The incident is another setback for the British Government, which claimed the migrant crisis had ‘peaked’. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond prompted controversy when he said measures to stop migrants breaking into the Eurotunnel terminal were ‘having an effect’.
Damian Collins, MP for Folkestone, said: ‘It is an extremely serious breach of security. The tunnel should be monitored by cameras to pick this up. It is very disturbing that he wasn’t.’
Ukip MP Douglas Carswell said: ‘The UK Government needs to take ownership and responsibility over what is going on. The Foreign Secretary said this week he had a grip when he very clearly hasn’t.’
Haroun, of no fixed abode, appeared via videolink at Medway Magistrates’ Court yesterday charged with ‘ obstructing engines or carriages on a railway’ under Section 36 of the Malicious Damage Act 1861. He withheld a plea and was told to reappear at Canterbury Crown Court on August 24.
A Eurotunnel spokesman said it had launched an investigation.
‘Serious breach of security’
COULD the security situation at the Calais end of the Channel Tunnel get any more farcical?
Every day hundreds of migrants brazenly try to jump aboard lorries and cars in a desperate bid to reach soft-touch Britain.
And every day some of them of them succeed, making the rest ever more daring.
Last week, as French police stood by, a chanting mob of 200 ripped up fencing and stormed the tunnel entrance, blockading it for several hours.
Now a Sudanese refugee has slipped into the tunnel under the noses of security staff and simply walked to Britain as trains whizzed past him just inches away.
His reward will doubtless be asylum, with all the health and welfare benefits that status brings and his triumph will be an inspiration to those he left behind.
A police report this week suggested that about 70 per cent of Calais migrants eventually get through to Britain – about 900 a month.
Yet Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has declared that the government ‘has a grip’ on the crisis.
If he genuinely believes that, he’s a truly deluded man.