Jail threat haunts unlikely lover of Calais migrant

Record ID: 896167

  • Title: Jail threat haunts unlikely lover of Calais migrant
  • Date: 21st June 2017
  • Summary: CALAIS, FRANCE (FILE - OCTOBER 25, 2016) (REUTERS) MOKHTAR AMONG PROTESTERS MIGRANT WALKING PAST TENTS
  • Embargoed: 5th July 2017 14:38
  • Keywords: migrant channel Beatrice Huret Mokhtar Britain United Kingdom Iran Jungle Calais
  • Location: CALAIS, DANNES & WIERRE-EFFROY, FRANCE
  • City: CALAIS, DANNES & WIERRE-EFFROY, FRANCE
  • Country: France
  • Topics: Asylum/Immigration/Refugees,Human Interest / Brights / Odd News,Government/Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA0056M8L83R
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: She once supported France's anti-immigrant National Front party. She met and fell in love with Mokhtar, a teacher who fled Iran and ended up in Calais. She now risks 10 years in jail.
    Beatrice Huret, a former nursing aide who voted and even campaigned for the National Front, regrets nothing of her unlikely encounter - except that she is accused of people trafficking and could be put behind bars.
    "I knew I should not do it but I did not imagine there would be such consequences," says Huret, whose case will be ruled on by a court next week.
    "They know I did this out of love," she told Reuters. "What bothers me the most, is to be put in the same sack as those who made people pay for the crossing, who profited from the misery of refugees."
    Mokhtar, who wants his family name withheld because he fears jeopardising his situation, now lives in England on the opposite side of the sea from Calais, the French port city from which thousands like him have sought to reach Britain, many without success.
    He crossed the English Channel in a small boat he bought for a 1,000 euros ($1,115) and which Huret helped him choose, setting out with two others from the village of Dannes about 50 km south of Calais and a similar distance from the shores of England.
    "I said farewell to him that morning," says Huret, a little wistfully. "I did not say until next time, I said farewell. I was sure I was never going to see him again."
    Mokhtar and Huret was a meeting against all odds.
    Her deceased husband had been a policeman who also voted for the National Front, a party that says France has no duty to welcome migrants who have fled to Europe in record numbers from war and strife in Africa and the Middle East.
    Huret, who now devotes her time to aiding needy people, once even handed out leaflets for the party of Marine Le Pen, who lost the presidential election to centrist Emmanuel Macron last month, but won a seat in parliament along with seven other National Front politicians in a follow-up parliamentary election on June 18.
    Politics aside, the encounter would almost certainly never have happened if Huret had not stopped to offer hitchhikers a ride in her car to the entrance of The Jungle, a vast camp the hitcher shared with thousands of migrants, among them Mokhtar.
    Shocked at the squalor she saw, Huret chose to take action, launching an appeal for funds to aid Jungle residents, visiting the site again and meeting Mokhtar, one of several camp dwellers who had stitched their lips together to draw media attention to their plight.
    That was in March 2016.
    "We exchanged glances and something immediately clicked. It clicked," she reminisces.
    When asked some time later to put a few migrants up in her house, Huret discovered one of them was the same Mokhtar.
    Overcoming their language barrier with the help of Google Translate, she grew closer to Mokhtar and his companion, as did her son and mother who lived in the same house.
    Walking along the beach from which he set off for Britain in June 2016, Huret said: "People say distance dulls the emotions but no it gets stronger each time. As for the rest we don't talk about it. We live it day by day."
    A court is expected to rule on June 27 on Huret's case, where she faces a maximum potential sentence of 10 years in prison. She says Mokhtar, a former Farsi language teacher, has applied for asylum in Britain.
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