Man who swam to US from Canada to deliver books is released
Associated Press | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 6 years, 7 months AGO
DETROIT (AP) — A man who said he swam across the Detroit River from Canada to try to deliver handmade books before Christmas won his release Tuesday after two months in U.S. custody.
Christopher Sagajllo, 56, was arrested in December after crossing the river in a wetsuit and landing at a steel company's property on Zug Island, just south of Detroit.
U.S. District Judge Linda Parker sentenced Sagajllo to time served, clearing his return to St. Catherines, Ontario, where the British native is a permanent Canadian resident.
“He is not a dangerous individual,” defense attorney Benton Martin said.
Sagajllo, 56, declined to speak in court. But he explained in a letter why he chose a risky way to get into the U.S.
Sagajllo said he was desperate after being turned away days earlier at the border in Niagara Falls, New York. U.S. authorities said he was ineligible because he had been deported to the United Kingdom in 2010 after overstaying a visit by seven years.
Sagajllo said he had followed his religious faith and made books in silk bags.
“Four of the recipients were in the United States, and I believed they needed to be delivered before Christmas. ... I believed I needed to swim across. I felt that if I did not do what was, I believe, required of me, that something terrible would happen to me in the future," he wrote.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Fairchild said the government had no objection to returning Sagajllo to Canada after weeks in custody.
___
Follow Ed White at http://twitter.com/edwhiteap
ARTICLES BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hong Kong police arrest 4 from university student union
HONG KONG (AP) — Four members of a Hong Kong university student union were arrested Wednesday for allegedly advocating terrorism by paying tribute to a person who stabbed a police officer and then killed himself, police said.
For South Sudan mothers, COVID-19 shook a fragile foundation
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Paska Itwari Beda knows hunger all too well. The young mother of five children — all of them under age 10 — sometimes survives on one bowl of porridge a day, and her entire family is lucky to scrape together a single daily meal, even with much of the money Beda makes cleaning offices going toward food. She goes to bed hungry in hopes her children won’t have to work or beg like many others in South Sudan, a country only a decade old and already ripped apart by civil war.
For South Sudan mothers, COVID-19 shook a fragile foundation
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Paska Itwari Beda knows hunger all too well. The young mother of five children — all of them under age 10 — sometimes survives on one bowl of porridge a day, and her entire family is lucky to scrape together a single daily meal, even with much of the money Beda makes cleaning offices going toward food. She goes to bed hungry in hopes her children won’t have to work or beg like many others in South Sudan, a country only a decade old and already ripped apart by civil war.