The father of a seven-year-old girl who died in a migrant boat on an attempted Channel crossing has opened up on her final moments.
Ahmed Alhashimi, 41, described how his daughter Sara was crushed to death at the bottom of the dinghy off the coast of Calais on April 23.
He said he was unable to protect his daughter and would never forgive himself for her death in the incident, in which five people died overall. Two men have been charged in connection with the deaths.
“The sea was the only choice I had,” he told the BBC. “If people were in my place, what would they do? Those who (criticise me) haven’t suffered what I’ve suffered. This was my last option.”
Mr Alhashimi, an Iraqi, was with his wife Nour AlSaeed, and their two other children, Rahaf, 13, and Hussam, eight, were on the boat together.
They were boarding the boat when a group of Sudanese men piled on as it drifted off into the sea.
He said: “I just wanted [them] to move so I could pull my baby up. That time was like death itself. We saw people dying. I saw how those men were behaving.
“They didn’t care whom they were stepping on – a child, or someone’s head, young or old. People started to suffocate.”
Mr Alhashimi said he and his family had tried to cross the Channel four times since arriving in Calais two months earlier. Just 40 were supposed to be on the boat, but more than 100 ended up on board.
Mr Alhashimi was helping another of his children get onto the boat when he lost sight of Sara, and she was suffocated by other migrants on the boat.
He said: “I’m a construction worker. I’m strong. But I couldn’t pull my leg out. No wonder my little girl couldn’t either. She was under our feet.”
Eventually French emergency services cleared the boat and Mr Alhashimi caught sight of his daughter.
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.”
Mr Alhashimi said he had been living in Sweden for seven years, and had been trying to gain EU residency – but was turned down because he was from the Iraqi city of Basra, which is considered safe.
He said: “If I knew there was a one per cent chance that I could keep the kids in Belgium or France or Sweden or Finland I would keep them there.
“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.”
The UK has recently passed the Rwanda bill – an attempt to deter migrants from making the Channel crossing in the first place.
By Kit Heren@yung_chuvak
