Support grows for UK aid worker caught smuggling child from French migrant camp

Public support is growing in France for a British aid worker who is facing jail time in France. The man was caught trying to smuggle a young Afghan girl living in the so-called Jungle camp in Calais to relatives in Britain.

Migrants walk near tents in the "New Jungle" makeshift camp in Calais, northern France Reuters/Philippe Wojazer

Accused Rob Lawrie is a British tradesman who became involved in delivering humanitarian aid to migrants living in an area known as the Jungle in the port of Calais in northern France.

The camp is currently housing thousands of migrants living in squalid conditions.

Lawrie, a father of four from Leeds in central England, had visited the camp several times to help build shelters there.

Lawrie says an Afghan man with family living in Lawrie's home region asked Lawrie several times if he would take his four-year-old daughter across the Channel to the UK.

Late last month French police found the girl hidden in a storage compartment above the cabin of Lawrie's truck.

Lawrie faces a maximum sentence of five years.

A petition in French on campaigning website Change.org has now gathered more than 52,000 signatures asking for clemency.

Jim Innes, who had worked alongside Lawrie organising aid for the Calais migrants, set up online petitions in France and the UK.

Innes says Lawrie may have broken the law, but he acted as many a father would have done.

Lawrie is due back in French court on 14 January 2016.

Authorities have returned the girl to her father in the Calais camp.