A TOWN councillor who helped her son smuggle 16 Vietnamese immigrants from France to the UK has been jailed for three years.

Christiane Chocat, who sits on the Lumigny-Nesles-Ormeaux council in the Seine-et-Marne, drove a hire van with her son Benjamin to Cherbourg last October with 13 men and three women crammed in the back.

They boarded the Normandie Express ferry for Portsmouth and were stopped by UK border police at the other end of the three-hour crossing. Both pleaded guilty last month.

A court in Portsmouth heard that Ms Chocat's son had masterminded the plan and would have been paid €24,000 for getting the immigrants to the UK. He was jailed for five years.

According to the Portsmouth News, judge Roger Hetherington told Ms Chocat: "I accept that your involvement was subsidiary to that of your son. You may not have known all the details and you may not have received or expected any financial reward.

"Your motivation appears to have been totally misguided loyalty to your son. The sentence of the court must reflect the seriousness of the offence and must play its part in seeking to deter others from taking the calculated risk that you took."

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