IMMIGRATION officers who used a sniffer dog on a Suffolk-bound lorry in France discovered nine illegal immigrants hiding in the back.

Laurence Cawley

IMMIGRATION officers who used a sniffer dog on a Suffolk-bound lorry in France discovered nine illegal immigrants hiding in the back.

The French-registered lorry, which was bound for Sudbury, was stopped in Calais on November 13 when border officers found that the seal securing the soft-sided trailer had been tampered with.

When the trailer, bound for an address in Newton Road, was opened there were nine men - three Indians, three Afghans, two Vietnamese and one Palestinian - hiding among the load.

The driver of the vehicle and the company could now face a civil penalty of up to �2,000 for every stowaway if they are found not to have taken adequate steps to secure their load.

Tom Dowdall, UK Border Agency's director of European operations, said: “Our top priority is to stop would-be illegal immigrants before they reach the UK.

“That's why we've got hundreds of British immigration officers based overseas carrying out checks to stop illegal immigrants before they get to these shores.

“Since January we have stopped more than 14,000 individual attempts to cross the channel illegally and have searched more than 400,000 freight vehicles - checking that they are not harbouring illegal human cargo.”

The nine men were fingerprinted, photographed, refused entry to the UK and handed over to the French authorities.