The father of a seven-year-old girl crushed to death on a small boat has said they tried to cross the Channel after being informed his young family would be deported to Iraq after spending years in Europe.
Ahmed Alhashimi, 41, lost grasp of his daughter, Sara, on an inflatable dinghy after a large group of men rushed onboard as it was pulling away from the shores of Wimereux, south of Calais.
Sara was trampled as Alhashimi, who was also travelling with his wife, Nour AlSaeed, 13-year-old daughter, Rahaf, and eight-year-old son, Hussam, became jammed in and unable to reach her. Sara was one of five people who died in the crush last Tuesday.
Speaking to the BBC, Alhashimi, who said he left Basra in Iraq 14 years ago after being threatened by militia, said Sara had been born in Belgium and lived in Sweden but that multiple applications for asylum in EU countries had been rejected.
“If I knew there was a 1% chance that I could keep the kids in Belgium or France or Sweden or Finland I would keep them there,” he said. “All I wanted was for my kids to go to school. I didn’t want any assistance. My wife and I can work. I just wanted to protect them and their childhoods and their dignity.”
It had been the family’s fourth attempt at a crossing of the Channel since they had arrived in the Pas de Calais region two months earlier.
They had previously been caught by police but Alhashimi said the smugglers had assured him that for €1,500 (£1,280) per adult, and half for each child that they would be among 40 people, mostly Iraqis, to get on a boat.
Sara had been calm at first, Alhashimi said, holding her father’s hand as they walked from the train station in Wimereux the evening before and then hiding in the dunes north of town overnight.
Shortly before 6am, the group had inflated their dinghy and the smugglers had ordered them to carry it down on to the beach and run with it towards the sea.
Suddenly, Alhashimi said, a police teargas canister exploded near them and Sara began screaming.
Once on the boat, Alhashimi had kept Sara on his shoulders but had then taken her down to help his other daughter, Rahaf, to get onboard.
He begged those around him, including a young Sudanese man who had been among those to join the boat at the last moment, to move aside to let him grab his youngest child. “I just wanted him to move so I could pull my baby up,” Alhashimi said. He punched the man, but even that was ignored.
“That time was like death itself,” Alhashimi said. “We saw people dying. I saw how those men were behaving. They didn’t care who they were stepping on – a child, or someone’s head, young or old. People started to suffocate. I could not protect her. I will never forgive myself. But the sea was the only choice I had.”
It was only later, after French rescuers reached the boat and unloaded some of the 112 onboard, that Alhashimi was able to reach his daughter’s body. He said: “I saw her head in the corner of the boat. She was all blue. She was dead when we pulled her out. She wasn’t breathing.”
Alhashimi said Belgium had most recently rejected his asylum claim on the grounds that Basra was safe. The family had spent the last seven years living with a friend in Sweden.
Alhashimi said: “Everything that happened was against my will. I ran out of options. People blame me and say, ‘How could I risk my daughters?’ But I’ve spent 14 years in Europe and have been rejected.”
Late on Wednesday, French police said they had rescued 66 migrants, including women and children, from a crowded boat off the coast of Dieppe, on which they were trying to cross the Channel.