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Stuart MacDonald
The Times
Stuart MacDonald
The Times
Martin Compston, the Line of Duty star, has revealed that he helped an Uber driver’s family flee the Taliban in Afghanistan after the man drove him home from a night out.
Compston got chatting with an Afghan man on a journey from the Las Vegas strip to his home near by. The man, named as Naweed, told him he was desperately trying to ensure that his wife and baby daughter escaped Afghanistan after the US pulled its troops out of the country last year.
He had worked as an interpreter for the US military and feared that his family’s lives would be in danger after the Taliban took back control.
Compston, 38, used his contacts to put the family in touch with a lawyer in the US, and helped get them to Las Vegas where they have now set up home.
“I was on a night out on the Las Vegas strip and I got an Uber home and got chatting with the driver,” he said. “As it turns out he was from Afghanistan and had been an interpreter for the American army. He was in Vegas on a special visa, waiting on his citizenship. “His wife and young baby were still in Kabul and he had been going back and forth for years quite freely while they were working on their appeals to become US citizens. “After the Allied troops pulled out he was in this horrible situation where he was in Vegas and his wife and baby were left behind in a warzone. With him having worked for the American army he had a target on his back, and hence so did they.” Compston said that by the end of the car journey he was convinced he wanted to help the man’s family. Speaking on BBC Radio Five Live he added: “Working in my job you get to meet a lot of people and I just started calling everybody I know. “By luck, War Child had reached out to me to help with a campaign and I said ‘Absolutely, but I actually have a child in a war zone, what advice can you give me?’ “They put me in touch with this amazing lawyer in Washington DC and she took on the case pro bono. “We started petitioning senators and doing as much as we could. “I texted Naweed to say we would get them out soon. He called me to say he was back in Afghanistan. “My heart sank but I understand why he did it. He said ‘I can’t let my wife and daughter run from house to house without me when I put them in this situation.’ “It took a bit of time and an incredible amount of bravery on their part but finally we got them to Qatar where they were looked after and processed and then we got them back to Vegas.” Compston said he and wife Tianna have now become good friends with the family. He said: “They are setting up their house, me and my wife went round there for dinner and then they all came round our house for 4th of July. “It was beautiful. It felt like it was the proper start of their American story. “It all started with that Uber journey and I’m just so happy that they are safe.”Advertisem*nt
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