Russian Sailor Detained After Crossing English Channel--on Foot

PARIS —  People have swum the English Channel before. Now someone has walked from England to France.

A 36-year-old Russian sailor was detained Wednesday in the Channel Tunnel where trains emerge on the French side, near Calais. He entered the 30-mile undersea tunnel over the weekend on the English side, police said.

Police were still trying to figure out how he was able to avoid detection by surveillance cameras and get past high fences and barbed wire. But the real miracle, they said, was that he was still alive.

The tunnel is supposed to be only for high-speed trains that whiz up to 92 mph through the tunnel dozens of times a day, whipping up winds that can suck up objects, even a human being.

The company that runs the tunnel believes that the man survived by taking refuge in small openings in the wall every 410 yards.

“We are still asking ourselves how this man could have gotten into the tunnel,” said Dominique Maire, spokeswoman for Eurotunnel in Paris.

The company is “very worried” by the incident, the first time a pedestrian has used the tunnel, she said, adding that “we will be very interested in knowing why.”

The man, who was not identified by name, wanted to join the French Foreign Legion, the Itar-Tass news agency in Moscow said.

Itar-Tass said the man arrived in Scotland in November on the Russian trading ship Polar Star, then hitchhiked across England to make his way to France and the famed fighting force.

French police returned the man to England, where he was being questioned by immigration officers, the British Home Office said.