‘Masud should not have died like this. This must be changed’

He was the boy looking forward to life in Britain with his family, but whose deathgalvanised demands for unaccompanied child refugees to be allowed into the UK.

Although Masud Naveed, 15, was legally entitled to claim entry to the UK to be reunited with his sister, the Home Office refused to consider his application for asylum.

Disillusioned with existence in the squalid “Jungle” camp in Calais, Masud boarded a lorry destined for England at the start of the year, but died from suffocation.

Following a campaign by the charity Citizens UK, backed by the Observer, a court ruled that the Home Office was wrong to refuse to consider cases like that of Masud, paving the way for hundreds of others stranded in northern France to cross the Channel under EU “family reunion” rules.

Four Syrian refugees from the Calais “Jungle” arrived in London on Friday following the court victory, a joyous crowd greeting them with balloons and placards saying: “Welcome To Britain” and “Refugees Welcome Here”.

Masud’s death is all the more poignant because the teenager was about to claim asylum in Sweden before suddenly deciding that he wanted to live with his sister in England, travelling to Calais last September. “He changed his mind because he wanted to be with his sister in the UK, he wanted to be with his family,” said Mohammad Nabi, a fellow Afghan who shared a tent with Masud in the “Jungle”.