Ex-soldier Robert Lawrie acted in ‘moment of madness’ and out of compassion, attempting to save infant from squalid refugee camp near Calais

A former soldier who tried to smuggle a four-year-old Afghan girl into Britain is to appear in a French court on Thursday charged with aiding illegal immigration.

Robert Lawrie says he acted in a “moment of madness” and out of compassion, but now regrets trying to save the child from the “Jungle”, the notorious refugee camp near Calais.

He met Bahar Ahmadi, who he calls “Bru”, after delivering tents and aid to the squalid camp. The child’s father repeatedly begged him to take her across the Channel to relatives living in Leeds. Lawrie, 49, from Guiseley, Leeds, has said he first refused but late one night before he left to return to Britain decided he could not leave the girl in the cold and wet and agreed to hide her in his van.

He was caught after British border police in Calais with sniffer dogs discovered two Eritrean men who, unbeknown to Lawrie, had stowed away in the back of his van.



As French police led Lawrie away in handcuffs, he admitted the child was in the vehicle and sent officers back to rescue her.

He will go on trial on Thursday afternoon and faces up to five years in jail and a €30,000 fine (£22,500) if convicted.

Speaking to the Guardian hours before he was due before a judge in the coastal town of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Lawrie said: “I don’t honestly know how I feel. I’ve never been in trouble before.



“It’s a serious offence and my lawyer has put some hard truths on the table. In France, this sort of thing covers the spectrum of trying to help someone to trafficking. It’s all very nerve-racking.”



He added: “The judge is not supposed to be swayed by politics or emotion but only look at the facts, but they are still human beings and my lawyer says it’s a high-profile case.”



Speaking of Bahar, he said: “She’s an intelligent girl and just four years old. If we get her now and educate her we could have a future doctor, teacher, scientist. Instead she is still in the camp.



“What people in Britain who are fed by the rightwing media don’t understand is that these people are hardworking people. They don’t want to come to Britain for benefits and a council house, they want to come and work and better themselves because they come from nothing.



“Reza, Bahar’s father, is a farmer. He has worked from the age of eight or nine years old, he wants to work, earn money, pay taxes and have a better life for his daughter. Isn’t that what everyone wants? If we can help Bahar and children like her now, they can do anything.



“I have got to know these people in the camp quite well and I can tell you they are not saying: ‘Let’s go to England for a council house and benefits.’



“I’m just a simple man from the north of England. But I have always said it’s not about me, it is a platform for me to use to highlight cases like Bru’s. People in Britain think it’s just young black men trying to get on trains and lorries to cross the Channel and I like to think I have shown that this is not the case and am giving people the proof.”

More than 50,000 people have signed a petition urging the British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, to appeal to the French authorities for clemency.

“Rob shouldn’t be treated as a criminal, but as an ordinary man who (was) trying to do the right thing in extraordinary circumstances,” wrote the petition organiser, Jim Innes.



Supporters have been asked to attend the court hearing in Boulogne-sur-Mer. A French petition has nearly 120,000 signatures.

Lawrie said he had been overwhelmed by the support he had received from around the world. “I have had tens of thousands of messages from as far away as India, Mexico, Argentina. I turned on the television when I got to France last night and there I was. It’s surreal.”

Lawrie closed his carpet cleaning business, bought a van and decided to transport tents and materials to the Jungle after being moved by the images of Alan Kurdi, the toddler washed up on the beach in Turkey after the dinghy in which he was trying to reach Greece sank in the Aegean Sea in September.



“I didn’t know what difference I could make, I just knew I had to get down to Europe, in the camps, Dunkirk, Calais, to get down to the Hungarian border. Just do something,” Lawrie told journalists.

However, the former Royal Corps of Transport soldier and father of four said his involvement with refugees in the Calais camp has cost him “everything” after his second wife left the family home taking their two children.

His Facebook page was filled with messages of support on Wednesday. In an al-Jazeera video posted on the social network, Lawrie explains why he broke the law.

“We cannot help everyone, but everyone can help someone and she had become my someone,” he said. “I just did it because I could no longer see her live in this squalid environment. She’s a special little girl and in all the months that I spent with her, I never saw her without a smile.

“I do regret it. I do regret it because it’s cost me everything. It’s cost me my family and it’s financially bankrupt me. But that’s about me. It was done on the spur of the moment out of compassion.”



The former army physical training instructor said he had been helping to design and build shelters for some of the estimated 4,200 people living in the camp near the Channel tunnel and the ferry port when he got to know the girl who followed him around.



Lawrie plans to plead guilty, but his Paris-based French lawyer Lucile Abassade is to ask the court to release him, arguing that to have ignored the appeal by the girl’s father, Reza Ahmadi, would have infringed French law requiring people to give assistance to someone in danger.



Martine Devries, a French volunteer who helps displaced people in the Jungle and supports Lawrie’s defence, said the case called into question the state’s treatment of refugees and its “persecution and intimidation of those trying to help them”.



She said: “Our volunteers suffer daily harassment and we want to use this case to show that the state is not fulfilling its obligation to protect the weak and provide dignified conditions in which they can live.



“We hope that Mr Lawrie, who acted with good intentions and not for money will not be jailed.”

