RELATIVES of a group of former British soldiers who have been jailed in India delivered a 100,000-strong petition to Downing Street yesterday, urging the UK Government to do more to help the men.
Supporters, including families of the six men, handed in the petition urging Prime Minister David Cameron to intervene.
They have also launched a campaign to raise money for a "fighting fund" to help their loved ones in prison.
Billy Irving, from Connel, Scotland; Nick Dunn, from Ashington, Northumberland; Ray Tindall from Chester; Paul Towers, from Yorkshire; John Armstrong from Wigton, Cumbria, and Nicholas Simpson, from Catterick, North Yorkshire, were arrested on October 12 and have been in prison in India since October 24.
The men were working for US private maritime company AdvanFort providing anti-piracy protection when their ship was detained.
According to the men, Indian authorities claim that the vessel had entered Indian waters illegally with weapons on board, despite AdvanFort apparently insisting that the ship had the correct papers.
A petition, set up on online platform Change.org, calls on the Government to step in and help the men.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article