Refugee crisis: Father of Afghan girl at centre of smuggling row defends Briton he begged to 'rescue' his daughter

The father of a four-year-old Afghan girl at the centre of a people smuggling row has explained why he begged a former soldier from Leeds to try to bring her to England.

“I’m 100 per cent worried about her,” Reza Ahmadi told The Independent through the broken English of a fellow refugee who was acting as translator.

Mr Ahmadi, 33, a farmer from Daikundi, Afghanistan, was speaking the day after The Independent revealed that the man he persuaded to “rescue” his daughter, Bahar, 4, by taking her to England was facing up to five years in jail for people trafficking.

Rob Lawrie, 49, who was moved to help refugees after he saw the photograph of Aylan Kurdie washed up on a Turkish beach, hoped Bahar would find a new life with relatives who are already legally living in England.

Instead, he was caught and Bahar was sent back to the Jungle – the name given to the Calais migrant camp.

Mr Lawrie faces a trial in France on a charge of aiding illegal immigration, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in jail.

Mr Ahmadi spoke from the 7ft by 7ft wood and tarpaulin shelter among the rubbish-strewn muddy tracks of the shanty town refugee camp that is the Calais Jungle.

Winter is drawing in, the nights are getting ever colder, and the only source of heat in the shelter are blankets and a solitary candle.

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The family explained they had initially been OK on arriving in the Jungle two months ago, having paid traffickers to arrange a four-week journey across Asia and Europe in a series of lorries.

“Now,” says Mr Ahmadi, “the weather is getting cold and there may be snow soon.” It was from these circumstances that Mr Lawrie was moved to commit what he describes as a crime of “compassion”. A petition calling on the British government to intervene on his behalf had gathered more than 12,000 names.

Bahar greeted her new visitors, an Independent reporter and photographer, with an impish grin. She was soon playing with the photographer’s camera and using the reporter’s pen to draw pictures of her friends.

Momentarily Bahar’s face clouded over when the name of “Mr Rob” was mentioned. Asked what she would tell the French judge she says “I want Mr Rob to be free. He should never be left in jail. He’s very good and kind.”

Bahar last saw “Mr Rob’’ in a cell at Coquelles detention centre where French police had taken her to see whether she knew Mr Lawrie. All fears of a possible child abduction ended when she burst into tears and ran to him for a cuddle. “I like him a lot,” she says now. “We played peek-a-boo together.

“I’m worried and sad for Mr Rob. I want to apologise to him for the trouble he’s in.”

Video: Calais refugees share personal stories

Now bailed and back in Britain, Mr Lawrie said “paternal instinct kicked in” when Bahar fell asleep on his knee and Mr Ahmadi asked him to take her into Britain.

Others may be less forgiving of Mr Lawrie and her father. Mr Ahmadi said he wants to work when he gets to the UK and wants his daughter to grow up “to be a good person and to work hard”.

But he also insisted “the UK is better than France. Without an ID card in France you can’t work and there are no benefits. We could be on the streets in France.”

He said conflict was a factor in his decision to leave Afghanistan, where he still has relatives: “Afghanistan is too dangerous for me. Please say hello to Mr Rob and thank him.”

Just three days after being set up, almost 12,000 people have signed the “Spare Rob Lawrie from prison” petition calling on Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond to speak to his French counterparts about clemency for him.

“Rob shouldn’t be treated as a criminal but as an ordinary man trying to do the right thing in extraordinary circumstances,” Jim Innes, who created the campaign, wrote on the 38 Degrees website.

“Knowing that a four-year-old girl could be reunited with her family just 20 miles from where he lives, where she could be warm, fed and safe, meant he took drastic action,” he added.

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More than 700 people have also joined a Facebook group called “Support Rob Lawrie” while Mr Lawrie himself has set up a crowdfunder campaign to raise money to help bring Bahar to the UK and build shelters for others in the camps.

Calling her “a child of The Jungle in Calais,” he wrote on the website that “she represents all that is wrong with the refugee crisis”.

“She has family living in Leeds and yet, after fleeing war in Afghanistan with her daddy, she can go no further than Calais,” he said. “Please support her quest for freedom. She is a four-year-old facing winter in a tent.” Moved by The Independent’s front page showing the body of the three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach, Mr Lawrie said he packed up his carpet-cleaning business and bought a van to carry aid to refugees in Calais.

While sharing a shelter in the Jungle with one of them, he said Bahar started following him everywhere.

“She was just an innocent little girl who had lost the birth lottery,” he said. “I’m not saying, ‘Look at me, I’m a hero’, I’m saying, ‘I did it the wrong way, let’s try and find the right way’, because whatever way we do, this is not right,” he said.