Judo champion and accomplice jailed for smuggling migrants on boat
Judo champion and accomplice jailed for smuggling migrants on boat
A former judo champion and his accomplice have been jailed for more than four years for attempting to smuggle 18 Albanian immigrants into Britain on an overcrowded rubber dinghy. Robert Stilwell, who represented Great Britain and held European and Commonwealth titles, and Mark Stribling, 35, were sentenced after admitting the bungled operation in which they had to be rescued by the RNLI and Coastguard. Jailing them, Judge Jeremy Carey said: "This case shows the best and the worst of human characteristics. On the part of the rescue services, a real and conspicuous devotion to duty and at considerable risk to themselves. On your part, greed, recklessness and deceit and the desire to get easy money."
That you had no experience or limited experience of a seafaring kind is not a mitigating factor but in my judgement an aggravating one because it shows just how much at risk these people were.
Each of the migrants had paid £6,000 for the crossing - and Stribling and Stilwell, 33, were expecting to pocket £2,000 each from the deal, Maidstone Crown Court was told. But the vessel lost power shortly after setting off from France on the evening of May 28 and was drifting for almost three hours, taking in water. Coastguards were alerted when worried migrants, fearing they would drown, phoned their families. One woman migrant was "showing signs of hypothermia" when lifeboat crews arrived, the court heard. They also alleged they were threatened by the two men, who said they would puncture the boat with scissors if they told the authorities.
They believe if they had been 10 more minutes on that boat they would have died
