AFTER escaping their home country of Eritrea, being imprisoned, then spending a year in the infamous Calais 'jungle' camp — two boys have just enjoyed an idyllic holiday on the Isle of Wight.

Robel, 16, and Yemane, 17, have been placed into foster care in Northumberland, and were invited to the Isle of Wight for a week by film director Sue Clayton, of St Helens, who met them when they featured in her film Calais Children: A Case to Answer.

Sue said: "It was a joy to see them so well and looking so different to when they had been starving, anxious and in all sorts of danger in the jungle.

"They've now settled in school and are doing really well. They've never had a holiday and I'm so grateful to Tackt-Isle Adventures for generously offering them some taster sessions in kayaking and Segway, and offering them bikes so they could cycle round the area.

"It was lovely to see them just be normal young kids, and be less stressed and worried about their future.

"The boys left Eritrea when they were 12. The country is controlled by a military dictator and teenage boys are recruited into the army for often lifelong conscription.

"Worse, as Christians, Yemane and Robel would have been put in the frontline where they would almost certainly have been killed while still very young.

"Both were sent away by their concerned families. They'd attended the same school, but didn’t know each other well.

"They spent two years struggling through beatings and imprisonment in Sudan and Libya, and then faced the dangerous journey crossing the Mediterranean, to get to a safe place.

"In Calais, where they lived for another year, they faced traffickers, police violence and tear-gassing.

"All Robel wanted was to join his aunt in Sheffield, which he had a legal right to do — but who was going to look after his rights? There was no-one there to help him.

"Yemane had no family in England, but with his father and brother dead, and having learnt English, his mind was set on England as a safe haven where he could grow up safely.

"Both boys want to return to Eritrea when they are older to work as doctors, and hope their country will soon be safe for them to do that."