Father of Calais boy who made Lily cry is Islamist fighter
THE father of the Afghan migrant boy who received a tearful apology from pop star Lily Allen fled his homeland because he had fought for an Islamist warlord, it has emerged.
The singer last week took it upon herself to say sorry ‘on behalf of my country’ to 13-year-old Shamsher Sherin, who is living in squalor in the Jungle migrant camp outside Calais while he attempts to reach the UK.
Now it has been disclosed that his father, Hazrat Gul Sherin, was a commander in the Islamist group Hezb-e-Islami, led by the ‘Butcher of Kabul’, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
Hekmatyar was dubbed a ‘war criminal’ by Afghanistan’s postTaliban government led by Hamid Karzai.
Mr Sherin, 49, who has lived in Birmingham for seven years, was smuggled into Britain in the back of a lorry in 2005 and claimed asylum, on the grounds that his life would be in danger if he returned to Afghanistan because of his association with the brutal warlord.
He contradicted Miss Allen’s claims last week that the family had been ‘put in the hands of the Taliban’ by Britain’s military interventions in the country.
‘I was not escaping the Taliban,’ Mr Sherin said.
‘I had been a commander for Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Hezbe-Islami for many years and was put in charge of the village of Shershia in Jalalabad.’
He said he had a ‘profile’ in the country thanks to his status with the Islamic fighters but when the Western-backed government took over he was forced to flee.
‘I knew I had to escape to build a better future for my family,’ he said, describing how he went to Pakistan before paying £6,000 to people-traffickers to come to Britain.
‘They took a group of us overland,’ Mr Sherin said. ‘I came into Britain in the back of a lorry packed with fruit. It was very tough but I was safe and I am thankful to Britain for that.’
He was granted indefinite leave to remain by the Home Office in September 2012, seven years after his asylum claim was first lodged.
But in a further twist, it emerged that despite claiming his life would be in danger if he were forced to return to Afghanistan, Mr Sherin has since been home for a threemonth holiday.
From December to March this year he visited his wife in Afghanistan and was concerned to find Shamsher missing. It was feared the boy had been taken by Islamic State fighters, he said. In her visit to the Jungle camp with a BBC programme last week, Miss Allen, who lives in a £2million house in Notting Hill, west London, said: ‘It just seems that at three different intervals in this young boy’s life, the English in particular have put you in danger.
‘We’ve bombed your country, put you in the hands of the Taliban and now put you in danger of risking your life to get into our country.
‘I apologise on behalf of my country. I’m sorry for what we have put you through.’
Last week the Mail revealed how Shamsher thanked Britain for fighting the Taliban after we tracked him down in the Jungle.
‘The British Government didn’t make any problems for me in Afghanistan,’ he said.
Asked what he thought about British military attacks on the Taliban in the country, he beamed and said: ‘I was happy.’
The teenager said the Taliban ‘kidnapped me and brought me to the Taliban training centre and gave me jobs to try to make me a fighter.’
Shamsher then decided to flee, spending £5,400 on bus fares and money for motorbike and car journeys across Asia and Europe to the English Channel.