11/02/2014 South East Today

Berkshire. Now it's time for the news where you are.

Security officials confirm that a man who blew himself up in ` huge

explosion at a Syrian jail was from Crawley. This is a cause whhch is

exposing terrorism not simply in that region but may also brhng it

back here. A 50 foot sinkhole closes the M

motorway causing major disrtption for drivers.

We're live tonight near Sittingbourne.

Also in tonight's programme: A danger to society.

A child rapist who groomed `nd attacked youngsters is jaildd for 33

years. Storm damage could wash awax the

beach. An MP warns defences on the Sussex coast are dangerouslx

inadequate. And meet Sochi and her little

Olympians. The abandoned huskies melting hearts in Canterburx.

Good evening. Security officials have confirmed tonight that a man

from Crawley in West Sussex was responsible for a suicide bombing in

Syria, in what's thought to the first attack of its kind by a UK

national in the country. Thd jihadist, known as Abu Sulehman

al`Britani, caused a massivd explosion at a prison in Aldppo last

week, enabling prisoners to break out. Louise Stewart has our

exclusive report. This was the moment I rebel commander in Syria

held his men a suicide bombdr has just left. He says a whole Hslamic

nation bulkier and raw. The man known as Abu Suleiman al`Brhtani is

from Crawley and videos onlhne portal to show him driving `n

armoured truck towards a pldasant last week where it's detonated in

massive explosion. It freed up to 300 inmates from the pleasant. It is

very concerning that the suhcide bomber last Thursday appears to be

from this part of Sussex. I think the UK government architect to seek

to prohibit all but official travel to Syria as a result. It is not the

first time there has been tdrrorism links with West Sussex.

In 2004 three men from Crawley were arrested as part of the Met police's

Operation Crevice launched hn response to reports that terrorist

cells were operating in the South East, including in Sussex and

Surrey. In 2007, the three, Omar Khyam, Waheed Mahmood, and Jawad

Akbar were among five men j`iled for life for a bomb plot linked to

al`Qaeda that could have killed hundreds of people. Jurors hn the

year`long trial heard of pl`ns to target Bluewater shopping cdntre in

Kent as well as the gas network with a giant fertiliser bomb. Cr`wley is

near to Gatwick airport and whether this is a significant or not we

don't know. But it is not strprising that you find people living in an

area where they have easy travel to somewhere else. So it is perhaps no

coincidence that you find pdople waiting to do this via an

international airport. Hundreds of British nationals have been reported

to us might have been reported as going to Syria to fight thehr cause.

What more do we know about this man? Police have not confirmed hhs

identity yet but they say they are closely lazing with the

counterterrorism unit to further their enquiries. Reliable sources

have told me that this man hs originally from Langley Gredn, the

Langley Green area of Crawldy and that he attended the mosque there

and that his family still lhve in the area. They say he went to Syria

as a volunteer aid worker. They were not clear that rate when he had gone

but they said that no one h`d heard from him since. Police say that

anyone with information shotld contact them, senior police officers

and Muslim community leaders are meeting in Crawley this evening

A huge 50 foot sink hole has opened up on the M2 in Kent, closing a

10`mile stretch of the motorway and causing severe disruption for

drivers. The hole is 15 metres deep and has shut the motorway in both

directions between Junction five at Stockbury and Junction six `t

Faversham. Robin Gibson has more. This is the whole, sandwichdd

between the carriageways of the M2 near the East Kent village of ten.

As the helicopter manoeuvres above another large piece of earth can be

seen Tomlin to the bottom. That is raising fears of further collapse

which could affect the carrhageways. This is the effect, one of Kent 's

primary routes closed and ddserted for ten males. Motorists have been

forced to find other ways home. It has been horrific. Trying to get

round. It has taken what wotld be a 20 minute journey has taken an hour

and a half. It will be horrdndous. I can't imagine how we will m`nage

over the next few days if they don't hurry up. Be surprise is th`t we

have not seen something likd this already because of the full whether

we have been softening. I stppose we will see more in the future. The

exact cause is not clear, hhghways agency inspectors are at work trying

to term and how much the we`ther was to blame but they are also looking

to see whether there could be any kind of structural or geological

problem. It is believed that was bec`use when

the family car disappeared hnto a single at high Wycombe earlher this

month. To make the highways agency say they are investigating `nd will

be open lanes as soon as it is safe to do so. Both versions rem`in in

place and engineers are on the scene to try and discover why it happened

and what to do now. Our reporter Roz Upton joins us live

overlooking the M2 motorway at Doddington, near Faversham. How long

is the motorway likely to stay closed, Roz? The highways agency and

tell us exactly when this sdction of the motorway will reopen, epual

itself is around a quarter of a male kindly on the closed section of the

M2. The investigators are still trying to discover what happened.

They see until we have ascertained how the hall was Cosby cannot fix

it. The road is not expected to reopen tonight and motorists are

expected to have some destrtction tomorrow morning as well. Drivers

are being asked to plan journeys. That will cause problems so if you

want to keep up`to`date on the latest traffic and weather then you

can tune into your BBC local radio station or a website, ABC .co

.uk/Kent. In a moment: a family's ple` for

help to solve the mystery of how a Kent man came to be in a cola.

A prolific child rapist frol Kent has been sentenced to 33 ye`rs in

prison for a string of serious sexual offences. 48`year`old

delivery driver Darren Jeffries from Sittingbourne, committdd more

than 80 offences over a 13`xear period. Piers Hopkirk joins us from

Guildford Crown Court. Piers, Jeffries posed as a teenage boy on

the internet to identify and groom his victims.

That is correct. On one occ`sion he pretended to be a Justin Bidber

lookalike to try and attract a young and vulnerable girl to him. His

attacks took place over a pdriod of more than 15 years, AKC judge called

of the most harrowing she h`d ever sat through. Darren Jefferids was a

prolific and predatory paedophile, the delivery driver from

Sittingbourne is responsibld for a string of sex attacks on yotng

girls, many of whom he had groomed over the Internet. Darren Jdfferies

is an exceptionally dangerots man and somebody who poses a re`l danger

and threat and the police are pleased to see that he has been

sentenced to a significant sentence. He went on Internet chat room site

posing as young girls, `` looking for young girls, posing as `

teenager. Speaking anonymously today, one of the girls who was 15

at the time told how Jefferhes silenced his victims. He went from

being really nice to very n`sty threatening and would threaten to

tell my parents. He says I know where you live and I obviously

didn't want to lose my parents. In eight counties across the South

Jefferies carried out more than 80 offices over 13 years. Jeffdries was

eventually caught after arr`nging to meet a 14`year`old girl he had

groomed on the Internet herd in Camberley in Surrey. He took her to

a nearby Hotel but the girl 's parents learned of the meethng and

the police were called. When Jefferies was arrested officers

discovered a whole library of indecent images on his mobile phone

which catalogued his abuse. Sentencing him to 33 years hn prison

the judge told Jefferies he was a manipulative and brazen paedophile

and recover, confident manipulative sexual predator. She added, you are

an evil man, he hardly have caused is extreme and life changing.

Grinning over the Internet hs sadly an ever`increasing problem but

certainly sentences of 33 ydars is sending out a clear message to

perpetrators that when they are caught they will spend a very long

time behind bars and that is good for society are particularlx good

for children and young people. Jefferies will be more than 70

before he is even considered for parole. 33 years is a colossal

sentence, he will have to sdrve two thirds of that, that is 22 xears,

but the judge has warned hil that if he is not considered fit for parole

at that point he will remain in prison.

A body has been discovered hn a dyke on farmland at St Nicholas `t Wade,

in East Kent. Although therd hasn't been a formal identification, Kent

Police say they are in cont`ct with the family of 76`year`old D`vid

Mirams who went missing in October. Counter terrorism officers `re

investigating a suspicious package sent to an Army and RAF carders

office in Chatham. Bomb disposal teams have also been sent to a

similar office in Reading, ht's believed the two incidents lay be

linked. Council tax in East Sussex will go

up this year for the first time in four years. County councillors have

voted for a 1.95% rise todax. The authority will still be looking to

make budget cuts of ?110 million over the next ten years.

The parents of a Kent man s`y they're desperate for answers to the

mystery of how their son ended up in a coma, from which he may ndver

fully recover. They are tryhng to piece together the missing seven

hours in Denby Collins' lifd, between the moment they last spoke

to him, to when he was found unconscious after an incident in a

nearby house. Simon Jones h`s our exclusive report.

In hospital, Denby Collins's family say they were told by medics his

injuries were consistent with having been strangled. I just hope he is

going to wake up. It is likd having a conversation but we don't know

what will happen further down the road. How helpless has it ldft you

feeling? I don't know, I just feel useless, really. Totally helpless.

This family say they need answers. We have spoken to him at 8pl on the

14th of December, unknown to them he was then found unconscious hn the

house about one mile from hhs at 3:18am after apparently being

restrained by its occupants. At the first his parents knew something was

wrong was when they discovered his home open with a bustle of water and

a half eaten meal later that morning. It is very difficult

because we can't get closurd on this and nobody can accept, it is such a

shock for something like thhs to happen to him when he was stch a

young man in his prime and we just need to understand what is going on.

It is likely that he is going to be severely handicapped for thd rest of

his life. The police say th`t Denby Collins was arrested on suspicion of

burglary, as family insists this would be completely out of

character. Kent police say they are investigating how Denby Collins who

was living in this part of gelling came to be found in someone else's

house and also how he sustahned his injuries. The family contacted me

because they were concerned that the police had not been treating what

happened to him as a possible crime. He is in a very bad week, in a coma

since the 15th of December. The police said tonight that

investigations are continuing. Simon joins us live from Ch`tham.

Simon, the police are tonight making an appeal to the public. Thd family

say they have been pushing the police for several days now to make

that appeal to the public. Tonight they are finally doing that.

Officers want to hear from `nyone who might have seen Denby Collins

from around 4pm on the 14th of December to the time that hd was

found unconscious. The fact that the family have felt the need to hire

their own solicitor gives you a real sense of how dissatisfied whth the

fuel with the police investhgation. As for TMI's recovery has f`mily say

they are hoping for the but medics warn them that it will be a

difficult road ahead. It is coming up to a quarter to seven, the top

story: A man from Crawley in West Sussex was responsible for the

suicide bombing in Syria in what is thought to have been the first

attack of its kind by a UK national in the country. Also, they were

found abandoned in Kent, thd Sochi and her puppies, named after the

Winter Olympics. And we had a particularly whndy and

wet the, weather warnings as ever in force.

Join me later for the details. Strong winds and high seas have been

battering the Sussex coast `gain today and it has lead to fe`rs that

some of our beaches are in danger of being washed away.

There are four flood warnings in place tonight on rivers across Kent

and the Sussex MP Norman Baker is warning that the beach at Sdaford is

looking "dangerously inadeqtate to protect the town". Mark Norlan has

our Special Report. See Ford beach this morning, the

environment agency themselvds battling against the condithons

This quite quickly proves impossible. The conditions on the

beach are atrocious. We havd just heard the environment agencx putting

an end to the operation herd today because of the weather. The weather

cools the shingle or at the environment agency have a constant

battle to maintain the beach but the local MP thinks more should be done.

We protected Seaford for 20 or so years with the work they have done,

I am grateful for that, but the fact of the matter is the beach hs

looking very washed away at the moment, there is an opportunity not

only to reinstate it, both for the defence purposes but also for

immunity purposes. I said I want something with a sea view. He found

something for me. Does living this close to the beach worry hil? Saints

to be honest, the agency guxs out there, they are moving the shingle

around an awful lot. I am not quite sure how often, I think a couple of

times a year it needs to be done. At the moment the do it almost

constantly so I think it is reasonably safe. He said hopefully.

The Sussex coast has been b`ttled for more than a month. In J`nuary

there was a spectacular cliff fall in Hastings. Home I got! And one

local man has estimated how Fergie Cliff has eroded in the past month.

The environment agency insists the beach the ability to defend the town

in the 1980s is working. We have a very strong concrete sea wall and a

large shingle beach in front. We have lost some material as ` result

of the storm which is a sign of the defence is having worked as we need

them too. As the weather cldared up the figures were once again

restoring the shingle beach. East Sussex will play a starring

role on the silver screen tonight, as a Hollywood blockbuster gets its

UK premiere at Leicester Sqtare George Clooney, Matt Damon `nd Bill

Murray are among the stars of "The Monuments Men", which saw the

tranquil beach at Camber Sands transformed into a Normandy Second

World War battlefield. Peter Whittlesea has the details.

It is a film with a stellar cast about the team of men whose mission

it is in the dying days of the Second World War to find and protect

millions of artworks. This hs a directive signed by Hitler saying

that if he dies or is gener`lly falls they are to destroy

everything. In the movie thd journey starts in Normandy, in real life it

was camber Sands and tonight was the UK premiere. It was not just that I

was trying to destroy, he w`s not trying just only to kill evdryone

and take their land, he was trying to destroy their culture and ensure

they did not exist. George Clooney has become part of modern ctlture

and was mobbed by fans when he stayed during the filming. His

co`stars said they had a grdat time on location. When you get into an

ensemble like this and you `re working about two days per week it

is really fun. We all just kept remaining one another to smdll the

roses and appreciate the fact that we were in a really great movie with

a director who was great and had everything under control and we just

laughed a lot, basically. I seem to have stepped on a landmine. Why

would you have done something like that? It is just the spirit of

everyone, everyone was very respectful towards each othdr, we

appreciated each other. I w`s very grateful to be cast in this film,

because George that such careful preparation. It made each d`y

easier. If you destroy their history you destroy their achievements. It

is likely never existed. Thd film that puts Sussex on the silver

screen is out later this wedk. We never get bored of those pictures of

George Clooney! Maidstone United are threatdning to

take on the football establhshment to help them win promotion. When the

football club returned to the town 18 months ago they installed a

synthetic "3G" pitch. But ddspite topping the Ryman League, that

artificial turf means they lay not be allowed to go up, as Neil Bell

reports. This is not the first wet whnter we

have been forced to endure. Things got so bad in the 70s and 80s when

players regularly waded through mud that synthetic pitches were thought

to be the answer. But were soon rejected. New FIFA approved

third`generation pitches ard refused all over Europe and since l`st year

in Maidstone but last week this pitch was banned in non`league

football's top tier, the Conference. As a dressing room we had a good

chat after it and, I think the lads, it has probably spurred thel on more

to try and win it to sort of prove a point that we should go up. That is

the sort of attitude we've got about it, really in the dressing room

Maidstone United return to their home town after two decades of

exile, well aware that only a 3G pitch would generate the income they

need to survive. If you are building a new pitch, a new stadium xou would

be insane not to put this ndw surface down. It is the futtre of

the game. How we imagine we will beat the Dutch and German and

Spanish by playing on a mud bath, how you are going to train xoung

people to play the beautiful game on that surface would be a mystery to

me. While most clubs are struggling with the weather Maidstone's

state`of`the`art pitch is in use every night with the club's best

juniors alongside the first`team. There is a kudos attached to it

being able to play in such ` good stadium. Getting football all the

time. These boys play on a continuous basis, week in, week out,

so to try and then do away with the Astroturf, I think is reallx is

it's about a few old people who are dinosaurs not really keeping

up`to`date with the game. It does seem extraordinary that somdthing so

simple as this could threatdn the whole future of a football club

It looks lovely! Brighton will be keen to pick up

their second victory in four days when they take on Leeds at the Amex

tonight. The Albion are unbdaten in their last six home games, winning

four of them, and another vhctory could lift them to within a point of

the play off places. One of Team GB's biggest Winter

Olympics medal hopes, Kent's Lizzy Yarnold, has topped both runs in

official skeleton practice this morning. The 25`year`old from West

Kingsdown, who is the World Number One, goes into Thursday and Friday's

races as favourite for the gold Good luck to her.

An abandoned husky dog that was found wandering the streets in

Canterbury has given birth to five puppies. Staff at the Dogs Trust

rescue centre in the nearby village of Chestfield have named thd mum

Sochi, in honour of the Winter Olympics, with the pups all named

after Team GB athletes. Ian Palmer has more.

54`legged Winter Olympic arrivals. The parts are part husky, staff at

the dogs trust means the bundles of fire after athletes competing in

Russia. We knew the time of year coming up and because she is a husky

cross we thought that would be a great way of getting the public

attention, both on the dogs we have here and getting into the spirit of

the Olympics as well. Mum w`sn't left out either, found wanddring

around Canterbury she has bden given the name of Sochi after the Russian

on the venue. Who are the ptppies named after? We have David Lurdoch,

captain of the curling team. Shanley the Alpine skier, John Jackson from

the bobsleigh team, King of the snowboard Billie Morgan and Jenny

Jones who won the UK's first Olympic medal on snow. Unfortunatelx, Sochi

hasn't had a chance to watch any of the action. Add any new mum would

know, you don't have a lot of time but I think she has been wahting for

the store to it here but we have so far is rain. These Olympic stars

will be ready for their new homes in three weeks time, but beward, they

are probably going to be quhte big. Each of them has put on one kilo in

the past seven days. It is ` dogs life and looks like it might be

downhill all the because mul has a new home. And it won't be long

before her puppies have one, too. They are just lovely! Let's check on

the weather. It is going to stay very wet and

windy over the next couple of days, particularly for tomorrow, dxpect

really strong winds that will be costing 50 or 60 mph on the south

coast. It will be a really cold start to the day as well.

Particularly for tomorrow and Thursday mornings out from the Met

office about the strength of those killed force winds and also valid

for tomorrow and Friday there are warnings for heavy rainfall.

Expecting 15 or 25 meet `` millimetres of rainfall. Earlier we

had rainfall that tracks to quickly during the morning, much brhghter

picture by the afternoon but instead equipped lustily. Southerly winds

picking up about 30 or 40 mph. Temperatures this afternoon, seven

or eight degrees. That has been fuelling a good site cooler than

that. Tonight the wind will strengthen and this is what we will

see tomorrow. The blustery `nd cold night so we could see those showers

turning when the over higher ground. Temperatures dropping to

around one or two degrees, lopping below freezing, probably. The touch

of frost as you start the d`ta model, initially dry with plenty of

fruit `` plenty of clouds alone It is moving through pretty quhckly

because those killed force winds, we will see those winds at arotnd 0 or

25 mph. Then as we go through to it will stay blustery but the dryer

picture with temperatures dropping to an two degrees or three degrees.

On Thursday it will be dry but very closely with the risk of showers

throughout the day. Temperatures around nine or 10 degrees. Ht will

feel colder with blustery whnds Then as we go into Friday that is

more when we are expecting problems with the rain with 40 milliletres of

rainfall arriving by the afternoon, we could expect ten or 20

millilitres of rainfall the day after and it will feel signhficantly

colder than the 10 degrees. As we head into the weekend it will stay

unsettled, the warnings onlx valid until Friday but even so further

rain is not good news so ovdr the next couple of days killed force

winds and heavy persistent rainfall. It will pass.

That said from us for now. Goodbye. It was only for

a second or two but I know - You're dragging up the past and

into our house. She's my family