Incredible yet devastating story for a Briton who tried helping a 4 years-old Syrian refugee crossing the
Rob Lawrie could risk going to prison because he tried transporting illegally a young Afghan girl to England. His trial will take place on the 14th of January. He attempted to commit suicide 3 weeks ago.
Rob Lawrie is 49 years-old and lives in Leeds, in the North of England. Rob was volunteering in the infamous refugee camp in Calais in the North of France also called “the jungle”. He went back and forth nine times during two months and each time spent several days building wooden shelters for refugees. He also distributed donations he had successfully managed to collect in England (boots, coats, blankets…).
Before going back home and taking the ferry, Rob sat around a campfire along with a few refugees including Bahar- a little girl from Afghanistan that everyone calls Bru- she fell asleep on Rob’s lap. Bru is alone in the camp with her father, her mother died during the war. Rob posted a video on his Facebook page showing the two of them playing blind man’s bluff that same morning. There is clearly a great complicity between them.
Bru’s father- Reza Ahmadi- asked Rob repeatedly for weeks if he could take her to England. He claimed that some of his cousins who live near Leeds would take care of her. After refusing systematically, Rob eventually gave in. He put Bru in a couchette installed in the back of his truck. It was illegal, of course and Rob knew this perfectly. But how can you leave a little girl in the cold and the mud when a family and a warm bed are waiting for her in England?
A few hours later Rob got arrested by the French police and sent to a detention center in Coquelles. At Customs, dogs sniffed something at the back of the truck. Two Eritrean immigrants were hidden, without him knowing. Bru was then discovered. According to Rob, French police officers yelled at him and he couldn’t understand a word but stated: “it felt like I had raped the little girl”. The police interrogated Rob for more than an hour, and finally let Bru in. “She was crying, disoriented. And when she saw me she jumped in my arms”. After that, the police escorted her immediately to her father.
After 3 days in jail, Rob Lawrie was released and is now waiting for trial on the next 14th of January in Boulogne-sur-Mer. He is charged for having “facilitated (…) the irregular circulation of a foreign person”. He is facing up to five years in prison.
Two petitions in France and in the U.K. have already collected more than 130,000 signatures to spare Rob Lawrie prison.
Source: Le Monde
Is it Moral or Illegal?
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