CANTERBURY, England: A Sudanese man who walked through the Channel Tunnel last year in an extreme example of the desperate measures some refugees are prepared to take to reach Britain, was sentenced to nine months’ jail on Wednesday but will walk free because of time he has already spent in detention.
Abdul Haroun, 40, had pleaded guilty at Canterbury Crown Court to obstructing a railway.
Haroun, who fled his home in the war-torn region of Darfur, was arrested by British police after walking 50 km (30 miles) from France in near total darkness as trains sped by. He was the first refugee known to have made it through the Channel Tunnel on foot.
The court heard he told police he had jumped over the perimeter fence near Calais and dodged the trains by clinging to metal brackets on the walls when he heard them approaching.
“Even if I died, there wasn’t another solution,” he said.
Haroun spent five months in jail until he was granted asylum in December and released on bail the following month, but continued to face a criminal charge under the obscure Malicious Damage Act of 1861.
He had previously pleaded not guilty but changed his plea on Wednesday.
Tunnel operator Eurotunnel and some politicians had called for him to face the full force of the law to deter others from following his example.
But refugee rights campaigners said he should not have been prosecuted for the way he entered a country of sanctuary.
Sudanese refugee sentenced for walking through Eurotunnel
Sudanese refugee sentenced for walking through Eurotunnel
Zelensky says Russia using Belarus territory to circumvent Ukrainian defenses
- While President Lukashenko has vowed to commit no troops to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, he allowed Russia to use Belarusian territory to launch its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine
KYIV: President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that Russia was using ordinary apartment blocks on the territory of its ally Belarus to attack Ukrainian targets and circumvent Kyiv’s defenses.
The Kremlin used Belarusian territory to launch its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and Belarus remains a steadfast ally, though longstanding President Alexander Lukashenko has vowed to commit no troops to the conflict.
“We note that the Russians are trying to bypass our defensive interceptor positions through the territory of neighboring Belarus. This is risky for Belarus,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram after a military staff meeting.
“It is unfortunate that Belarus is surrendering its sovereignty in favor of Russia’s aggressive ambitions.”
Zelensky said Ukrainian intelligence had observed that Belarus was deploying equipment to carry out its attacks “in Belarusian settlements near the border, including on residential buildings.
“Antennae and other equipment are located on the roofs of ordinary five-story apartment buildings, which help guide ‘Shaheds’ (Russian drones) to targets in our western regions. This is an absolute disregard for human lives, and it is important that Minsk stops playing with this.”
The Russian and Belarusian defense ministries did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Zelensky said the staff meeting also discussed ways of financing interceptor drones, which officials in Kyiv see as the best economically viable means of tackling Russian drone attacks, which have grown in intensity in recent months.
The president said the Ukrainian military’s general staff had been charged with working out changes to strategy in fending off air attacks “to defend infrastructure and frontline positions.”
Lukashenko this month said Russia’s Oreshnik ballistic missile system, described by Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin as impossible to intercept, had been deployed to Belarus and entered active combat duty.
An assessment by two US researchers, reported by Reuters on Friday, said Moscow was likely stationing the nuclear-capable hypersonic Oreshnik at a former air base in eastern Belarus, a development that could bolster Russia’s ability to deliver missiles across Europe.
