British men jailed over migrants flown from Calais to UK

A British architect and a carpenter have been jailed in France for attempting to smuggle migrants from Calais into the UK on board a four-seater Cessna plane.

David Green, 53, an architect from Essex, and carpenter Edward Buckley, 45, from Hertford, were both jailed for 30 months by a court in Boulogne-sur-Mer, court officials told the Telegraph.

The pair were part of a smuggling network and had on five occasions since April flown between two and four migrants to the UK from airfields near Calais and Le Touquet, with each passenger paying £10,000 for the trip, the court heard.

“They were attracted by the lure of profit,” a prosecutor told the court. “It is inadmissible to benefit from people’s misery by demanding such high sums.”

But Buckley’s lawyer responded that his client had not exploited anyone’s misery, as “the Albanians who opt for flying (to sneak into the UK) have money.”

When the two Britons have served the prison term they will be banned from entering French territory for five years, said prosecutor Philippe Sabatier, adding that the plane and a car used in the botched smuggling attempt had been confiscated.

Green, who was to pilot the single-engine Cessna 172 Skyhawk, and Buckley were arrested on Monday along with Buckley’s British wife - who was later released without charge - as the plane was preparing to take off from Marck airfield near Calais with four Albanian migrants on board.

The arrests came after French police were tipped off by British authorities, the court heard.

“This is the first time that we have come across attempted people-smuggling by plane” in the Calais region, prosecutor Sabatier said earlier this week.

Calais has for years been a magnet for migrants hoping to sneak into the UK but mostly they try to stow away on trucks heading for the ferry port or the Eurotunnel terminal.

The thwarted attempt to fly migrants into the UK came just a day before three migrants - believed to be an Afghan, a Pakistani, and an Iranian - abandoned their bid to get to England in a dinghysite, and returned to the French shore suffering from hypothermia.

Last weekend another migrant was picked up by a yacht in the Channel near Dunkirk after he was found out at sea on a raft he had made from planks of wood and bottles.

French authorities last October shut down a huge migrant camp near Calais nicknamed the “Jungle” which at its peak was home to more than 10,000 people, most of them hoping to make it to the UK.