JEP EXCLUSIVE
Button pressed, water starts to stream. It takes 43 seconds to fill up the 2-litre bottle and I have other three.
— What you need that much water for, David, swim in it?
A laugh follows, opposite the fountain machine.
— Yeah.
I squeeze out a dry smile without looking at the inmate, fill the last bottle and walk back to my cell on gelatinous legs. It’s from the gym session moments ago. After you’ve run three times one-mile sprints, rowed 5km in 18 minutes and pedalled (lung-busting) 2km airbike, you feel like a flat-stamped can on pavement.
— Of course I’m going to swim in it...
David Law is used to getting attention at La Moye since he was sentenced to 15 months behind bars in March for entering the Island illegally.
His fellow prisoners have read the stories of the Shakespeare-quoting mystery man that was arrested in September last year after swimming from Jersey to France in a wet-suit and goggles and carrying 265 euros in cash.
Mr Law claims to be a British citizen, born in the UK before being taken to Myanmar by his father, an air worker, and mother when he was very young. He has lived on the streets in Europe since 2008, and said he decided to return to his homeland in 2023 after seeing King Charles’ first state visit to Germany while he was living in Berlin.
He chose to swim from France to Jersey – a distance of 24 kilometres – rather than from Calais to Dover, a distance of 33 kilometres – because it was both shorter and safer due to the lower levels of boat traffic. After a gruelling 13-hour swim he arrived at Rozel Bay, where he reached the shore and was taken in briefly by a resident on the East Coast who called an ambulance.
•Previous JEP coverage of David Law’s case
He was treated at Jersey’s General Hospital but later arrested for entering the Island illegally. During his trial, Crown Advocate Lauren Taylor said his claim to have swum to the Island from France were “a fabrication designed to avoid enforcement” and that he could not “give a single verifiable account” of his British citizenship. Mr Law says he has never had a passport.
Denied access to Mr Law by official channels, the JEP managed to contact him by letter. Then, despite various obstacles put in place by the authorities, this newspaper finally met him at La Moye and were able to tell his story for the first time. On June 16, the JEP received a third letter from Mr Law, which detailed his experiences in prison and on his life prior to reaching Jersey.
In it, he states that he has been visited on two occasions by a member of Jersey’s Lieutenant Governor’s Office, which has responsibility for matters concerning asylum and deportation. When Mr Law was sentenced, he was recommended for deportation but legal sources told the JEP that the government will struggle to force him to leave given his claims of British nationality.
Although Jersey is not subject to the UK Human Rights Act, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) does apply and Mr Law has the right to appeal should he be held beyond the term of his sentence. Were he to do that, the legal process would likely be protracted and Jersey would not be able to keep Mr Law in prison.
JCIS has declined to comment on Mr Law’s case on numerous occasions when contacted by the JEP. The Office of the Lieutenant Governor did not respond to requests for comment.
For his part, Mr Law describes his alleged interaction with the unnamed representative from the Lieutenant Governor’s Office as “strange”.
While his visitor claimed to want to help him, he said his his latest letter, he suspected otherwise.
“She said she was here to help me. I can rather see the opposite. [I fear] she’ll contribute to the prolonging and deepening of my limbo.”
Elsewhere in his letter, the inmate also paints a bleak picture of life inside La Moye, which received a critical report into conditions earlier this year. In it, Inspector Charlie Taylor said that since the previous inspection in 2017, education and work provision had “collapsed”. Earlier this year, the JEP reported that mental health provision was also lacking at the prison since the departure of former governor Susie Richardson in 2024.
•Part of the letter written by David Law
In his essay, Mr Law describes La Moye in evocative terms.
“A HMP warder [has] barred me in… Someone is banging his thick iron door and his angry shout is audible from afar. Either he’s been forgotten for the lunch or his urgent request [has been] unanswered for too long.”
“Sometimes I hear people screaming. The longest was from a neighbouring… offender. He came to prison shivering, wrapped in a blanket which reminded me of my own treatment for hypothermia in the ambulance.
“I wonder if this… lad has felt the same shock as mine when the heavy door coldly barred him in for the first time.
“I will forever remember the sound of the first banged-up. It is dull and sharp at the same time. When you reach up but can’t open the door, you know freedom is gone. The knuckle of my left hand bears the memory of a despairing try to break out.”
He also writes about his swim, quoting the Old Testament: “The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me.”
Mr Law says that the cord of his tow float was too long and kept getting tangled around his leg.
Every time he felt it tighten, “I needed to stop swimming, pull my right foot towards my chest and untie the knot. While doing so I clumsily rolled in the water like a baby in a cradle.”
Food, he said, gnawed at him.
“In the dry pouches I had two pieces of honey nut bars, the kind you grab for no reason at the cashier in a petrol station. One bar was supposed to sustain me for two hours [but] a wave came from behind and knocked [it] out of my hand.
“Oh, how I wish I had taken more bars.
“Even when the cramps couldn’t be suppressed and the surroundings were endless blueish grey I told myself – at least you’re going somewhere and that somewhere is connected to the whole world, even [if] you sink to the bottom of it.
“I didn’t allow myself to be pulled down. I rested my arms on the tow float and kicked the water pushing me slowly forward until a long think ‘string’ appeared on the horizon.
“Hours later when that thread became thicker and finally gained some shape I felt like a prisoner trying to count down his last month.”
Now Mr Law is a prisoner, and he finds himself thinking about prison movies like Shawshank Redemption, which he watched when he was a child.
He writes that he remembers Tim Robbins’ Andy Dufresne’s letter to his friend, Red (played by Morgan Freeman), after he escapes from prison: “Hope is a good thing and no good thing dies.”
“HMP is [not] Shawshank [but] the true walls are made of sheer hopelessness.”
His hope is sustained by exercise, and his time in the prison gym, which he obviously cherishes.
“[I just] ran three one mile sprints, rowed 5 km in 18 minutes and pedalled a lung-bursting two kilometres [on the] air bike. [I feel] like a flat stamped can on the pavement.”
Rather than, like Dufresne, digging a tunnel to escape, he says his “tool [is] is training as hard as possible so that when this is over I can swim in the open sea again, for a long distance and [with] less pain”.
He is not optimistic.
“It was said that after the sentence I could still be held in custody for [an] indefinite length [of time]. Indefinite. I have never felt so hard of being a British citizen.“
The letter also provides an insight into his thinking – he questions whether his appearance has counted against him in some way, and speaks about his case being used as an example to deter illegal immigration attempts.
“To them, an Asian face without a passport and an accent means a [criminal] suspect. Worse, if not a criminal then an illegal alien who will definitely lead boats of other ‘faces’ to occupy this neat little island. This is not a Shawshank fantasy. It is written in my sentencing that the authorities have enough reason to fear and punish me in order to deter further examples.”
Law’s letter ends abruptly. He says that a warder has just come into his cell to tell him he will be moved to L-Wing and he has half-an-hour to pack.
“My mind is drifting instantly into an empty and dirty new cell, just like my first one on the Block.”
‘The Block’ is the phrase he uses to describe a ward where prisoners who use physical violence are detained – it’s a place where he spent nine days upon arrival to La Moye, which he describes as a “dungeon”.
The reason he claims he started his journey there was because “I did and said nothing”.
“A senior officer invited me to a reception talk and I refused to give him any more information than I’d said to Customs.
“‘Well, Mr Law, since we can’t know any more about you, you’re a serious danger to the safety of us all.
“Boom, that was the start of [my] new life.”
More from David Law’s letter
David Law describes lunchtime at La Moye, which prompts memories of his famous swim 
“Even in the sea, I’d never tasted this kind of desperation” – David Law reflects on his arrival at HMP La Moye 
David Law says his experience has led him to think of Shawshank Redemption – but his “tool” is sport training, so he can swim again when he leaves 
“It’s said that after the sentence I could still be held in custody for indefinite length” – David Law reflects on his difficult situation, without ID to confirm his identity
