Rob Lawrie vows to keep fighting for refugees after he is found guilty by French court of lesser offence of endangering child

A retired British soldier who attempted to bring a four-year-old Afghan girl from the Calais refugee camp to the UK has vowed to continue his fight for the “teachers, doctors, lawyers of tomorrow” after a French court cleared him of people-smuggling.

Rob Lawrie was accused of illegally transporting a foreigner and stood trial in the northern town of Boulogne-sur-Mer on Thursday, four months after being arrested as he approached a ferry to the UK with a young refugee hidden in his van.

The 49-year-old was introduced to Bahar Ahmadi, nicknamed Bru, one night in October while visiting the refugee encampment known as the Jungle near the Channel crossing point. He told the court he made the “irrational and stupid decision” to smuggle her back to the UK after she fell asleep in his lap.

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“She is a child. She’s four years old. She has family who live near me and I had bonded with her,” said the former serviceman, from Guiseley, Leeds. “It was a cold night. She had fallen asleep on my knee. I could not leave her there in a tent.”

Facing a maximum sentence of five years in prison if found guilty, Lawrie wept as he described how one “ill-thought-out” decision to help the young girl had cost him his health, family and business. He was ultimately cleared of the charge, and instead found guilty of the lesser allegation of endangering a child, and fined €1,000.

Speaking after the verdict, Lawrie, who had looked increasingly upset and agitated during the hearing, vowed to keep fighting to end the suffering of refugee children in the camps of France. He said: “Thank you France, thank you. Compassion was in the dock today, and compassion has won. I am ecstatically happy and I’m happy to have raised the profile of children like Bahar. I’m not going back to the Jungle today, but I will.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Migrants move their belongings through the camp known as the Jungle in Calais. Photograph: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images

“We simply cannot leave these children in these camps. We either get them into our education system and have the teachers, doctors, lawyers of tomorrow, or we can leave them in the Jungle to rot and die of cold. I will carry on fighting for these children.”

He added: “I lost three stone in the run-up to this hearing. Today I feel I have lost 10. I feel so light.”



Lawrie was driving to the cross-Channel ferry late at night last year when his van was stopped by border police with sniffer dogs as he approached the ferry terminal in Calais; Bahar was hiding in a sleeping compartment above the driver’s seat.



In the back of the van, officers found two Eritrean refugees stowed away, unbeknown to Lawrie. He was not charged with any offence relating to the pair, aged 22 and 26, who had been in the van for more than 10 hours as Lawrie worked at the Jungle setting up tents and building shelters for thousands of refugees.



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“This was first of all out of character, and second, very stupid. In all honesty, I didn’t think it through and I should have done. In the light of day now, without the emotion attached at the time, I would have not done it,” Lawrie told the court.



Lawrie said that, as winter approached in the muddy shantytown camp, he designed shelters for families and enlisted Sudanese refugees to help him build them.



“Instead of me building one a day, with my Sudanese friends we could build three or four a day. I would go around the camp to see if there were parents of children living in tents and I would identify those most in need and offer them a shelter,” he said. “Eventually, I had a waiting list.”



He concluded: “These children are in so much trouble, basically because they lost the birth lottery, and although I did something wrong and I truly am sorry, I feel that these children need help.”



Lawrie, who has three children aged 14, 13 and seven, and one adopted 13-year-old, said his carpet cleaning business had failed because he had “thrown himself into helping these children”.



He told the court he had been diagnosed with bipolar and Tourette syndrome, and had been in hospital four times in the last two years “because of my health”. He also said he had taken a “massive doze” of diazepam and paracetamol in an attempt to end his life last November because of the stress of the legal case.



Talking about his background, he said: “I was brought up in a children’s home and when I got to the age of 16, the therapists in the children’s home said to me you can work in one of three factories in the town. I said no, not for me. I said ‘army’.”



He was initially engaged in the Royal Corps of Transport and trained as a physical training instructor. He served in Northern Ireland during the conflict in the 1980s, and patrolled the East German border before serving in Cyprus and Belize.



Lawrie told the court that Bahar’s father, Reza, a farmer who had fled Afghanistan, had asked him to take the child to close relatives who had settled in Leeds, not far from his home, but he had refused on several occasions.



On 24 October last year, he was sitting around a campfire when Bahar fell asleep on his knee and he agreed to hide her in his van. While the father installed her in the vehicle, Lawrie said he returned to her tent to retrieve her teddy bear.

The public prosecutor, Jean-Pierre Valensi, said nobody could remain indifferent to the suffering of those fleeing war and harbouring “hopes for a better life elsewhere”.



However, he said Lawrie could have helped the child without breaking the law. There were boos in court as he suggested Lawrie had put the child’s life in danger.



Lawrie’s defence lawyer rejected suggestions her client had endangered Bahar’s life. The court agreed.

