A shocking photo has shown the French actively assisting a controversial migrants’ boat preparing to leave the Normandy coast on an epic 36-hour journey to England last week.
The migrants are being handed lifejackets by the ‘French RNLI’, which is controlled by the Paris government, as lifeguards stand by to rescue any illegals who fall in.
Our exclusive picture shows the boat at the shoreline before it begins the marathon journey, believed to be the longest ever channel crossing of migrant illegals from France to England.
It began when around 50 people ran on to the beach and boarded the people smugglers’ boat at Port-en-Bessin in the centre of Normandy’s long coast last Monday morning.
On the say-so of the French government’s Ministry of Sea and the region’s coastguard, volunteers of the French equivalent of the RNLI, the SNSM, surrounded the rogue boat offering support and, incredibly, stayed alongside it for 38 miles.
The migrants’ boat hugged the shoreline until it reached the resort of Varaville where more migrants were waiting to board at what is believed to have been a pre-arranged ‘taxi stop’.
There, still under the watching eye of the French maritime authorities, 15 more migrants attempted or succeeded in clambering aboard the boat after wading into the sea without being stopped.
A local mayor offered shelter at a community hall to all the 60-plus migrants now aboard, but the boat was allowed to continue on.
This shocking photo shows the French actively assisting a controversial migrants’ boat preparing to leave the Normandy coast on an epic 36-hour journey to England last week
The migrants are being handed lifejackets by the ‘French RNLI’, which is controlled by the Paris government, as lifeguards stand by to rescue any illegals who fall in
People are seen watching the boat at Port-en-Bessin in the centre of Normandy’s long coast. Up to 50 people ran on to the beach and boarded the boat last Monday morning
‘The hospitality was refused by the migrants as they wanted to only go to England and leave France,’ said police later.
The crowded craft was then allowed to set off again. Still surrounded by the sea rescue crews, it travelled out towards a waiting French Navy patrol tug Abeille Liberte which shadowed the boat towards England, only peeling off when the migrants reached British waters 12 miles off the south coast.
UK Border Force then boarded the migrants onto its own vessel and headed for Gosport, near Portsmouth, on the Hampshire coast. It changed course when anti-migrant protesters threatened to greet the illegals on arrival.
The Border Force cutter diverted east to dock in Dover harbour on Tuesday evening, making the whole journey a record-breaking 36 hours.
The French collusion in the journey follows a press conference held along the Normandy coast four days earlier when local dignitaries boasted of a crackdown on a new upsurge of migrant crossings from Normandy.
The conference at the coastal hamlet of Senneville-sur-Fécamp was dramatically staged in a dry ravine pathway, recently used by migrants to reach the beach and boats.
The dignitaries announced proudly that British money – under the £662million three-year Sandhurst treaty renewed last April – will fund extra gendarmes to patrol the beaches, plus sophisticated drones and surveillance equipment to ‘combat illegal migrant activity’.
Ironically, the French recently warned they wanted the Sandhurst money, which is intended to last until 2029, upped to £1billion.
Migrants and Red Cross workers are seen at a shelter in the Port of Le Havre last Monday
Coastal ravines, like the one at Senneville-sur-Fécamp (pictured) ‘are an ideal spot for smugglers,’ explained Isabelle Bonamy, head of the Border Police for the Normandy area
A table and chairs are seen at a migrant camp in the Port of Cherbourg, along with an Afghanistan flag
Sébastien Huyghe, the chairman of a French parliamentary commission into Channel agreements, said that if the small boats crisis continued, France could demand an increase of 40 per cent.
He maintained Britain bore a significant responsibility for the current free-for-all because it was so attractive to migrants (who are given benefits and housing, with few deported).
According to French research a third of migrants who illegally enter the EU are heading for England.
Coastal ravines, like the one at Senneville-sur-Fécamp, ‘are an ideal spot for smugglers’, explained Isabelle Bonamy, head of the Border Police for the Normandy area last week. She said there are 40 of the routes along the coast.
‘We aren’t dealing with the sandy beaches of the French north that stretch as far as the eye can see. Monitoring these ravines is very complicated.’
Smuggling gangs guide the migrants to the ravine paths posing as hikers or by private taxi. The vast majority are sub-Saharan African, particularly Sudanese, while the gangs organising the launches are Syrian Kurds.
General Éric Delain, commander of the Normandy gendarmerie region, explained: ‘A few months ago we discovered an engine and a deflated inflatable boat in a private garden.
‘It was an unoccupied holiday home; this shows that unscrupulous smugglers do not hesitate to stash equipment on private property to facilitate departures later on.’
The Daily Mail last week found a new tall fence around the railway station at Abbeville, an inland Normandy town nine miles from the coast and thought to be the migrants’ gateway to Normandy.
It was erected by the local council a fortnight ago to stop migrants camping at the back of the station after coming in on trains from Paris, Calais and Dunkirk to await rides, by bus, taxi or vans, to the Normandy beaches via the ravine paths.
‘They come every week,’ said a married couple who live in a neat house by the station. ‘We see them all the time. Look at the rubbish they leave in the hedgerows before they go to the beaches.’
But whatever the French posturing, the question is whether Paris is really keeping its side of a very expensive bargain with the British to ‘stop the boats’.
Our telling picture taken on the Normandy coast on Monday suggests the opposite is the reality.
