Immigrants fled from curtainsider
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• A Danish driver has been bailed, pending police enquiries, after 15 illegal immigrants were arrested as they fled from his truck on the M4 Heston services on Sunday night.
The driver has to return to Hounslow in May, when police will decide whether to press charges. He was in a convoy of three Danish-registered Samson Transport curtainsiders which had travelled to the UK from Copenhagen via the Hook of Holland carrying windows, cakes and confectionary to the Wolverhampton area.
AA relay truck patrolman Steve Lawrence raised the alarm. He was parked on the service area at midnight when he saw the trailer's curtain cut from the inside and several men climb out.
Lawrence phoned police who sent 50 officers and a helicopter: 15 men were arrested but up to five more may have escaped. The Asians — believed to be from India — are being held by immigration authorities.
Lawrence lay on his cab floor while speaking to the police on his mobile. "It was obvious the stowaways had seen me — in a 32-tonner there could have been hundreds of them, and at least one had a knife," says Lawrence, who was voted top Relay patrol in the South East region earlier this month.
Copenhagen-based Samson has a UK base at Milton Keynes. Managing director Jonas Hansen is "100% certain" the driver did not know of the stowaways, who he believes boarded at Appledorn in Holland. The three trucks have completed their deliveries and returned to Denmark.