Wine truck stowaway shows his bottle

Feb 22 2009 by Coreena Ford, Sunday Sun

A LORRY-LOAD of wine was found to contain a surprise ingredient . . . a stowaway illegal immigrant.

The Iranian man was discovered when immigration officers searched a ferry entering the UK at Newhaven, East Sussex, and found him hidden inside a freight van.

The van was tightly-packed with glass bottles set to be delivered to a business in Newcastle, but officers found him by using special carbon dioxide detectors.

The man — who has not been named — was booted out of Britain and shipped over to Dieppe, France, leaving the driver of the wagon facing a £2000 fine for not making proper checks on his cargo.

UK Border Agency sleuths found another six men hidden in other vehicles from the ferry, heading for destinations across the country.

Regional director Carole Upshall said: “Our officers carried out thorough searches of the vehicles involved and discovered the men hiding in a variety of places.

“As a result, they established that the men had no right to be in the UK and removed them immediately back to France.”

The lorry on its way to Tyneside was being driven by a French man and details of the haulage company, or the firm that ordered the wine, are not being disclosed as enquiries continue into the incident, which happened two weeks ago.

The truck contained Spanish wine and it is thought the man inside could have been hiding for a number of days, having travelled around 700 miles from Spain.

An additional five men — two Ghanaian, two from the Ivory Coast and one Liberian — were found hidden in an Irish-registered lorry driven by a Polish national.

And an Iraqi was found during a visual search of a vehicle carrying paper, which was being driven to Stoke-on-Trent in Stafforshire.

The detection comes nearly a year after Durham-based firm TM Travel was fined £2000 when two Iranians were discovered in the engine of one of their vehicles.

The coach was inspected at Calais, France, having taken a group of students to EuroDisney in Paris, and the stowaways were uncovered.

They had clambered into a compartment in the bus at a shopping complex and planned to stay until they got to British soil.

Coach driver David Rowland was also fined £2000 for not taking steps to prevent them stowing away.

Ms Upshall added: “Last year, we searched over one million lorries and prevented 18,000 individual attempts to breach the UK Border.”