THE mother of Kerry Page - who could face up to 25 years in a Kenyan jail - is going to Downing Street later this month to hand in a petition to bring her home.

Elaine Garnham, 46, will be joined in London on Tuesday, April 28, by Batley and Spen MP Mike Wood who has been campaigning with the family to secure 29-year-old Kerry's freedom.

She is currently on bail in Nairobi awaiting trail on May 18 on charges of theft and handling stolen United Nations goods.

The news comes after Mrs Garnham, of Old Poplewell Lane, Scholes, Cleckheaton, revealed that 3,500 people have so far signed the petition which calls on the Foreign Office to put pressure on the Kenyan authorities to return her daughter's passport.

And Kerry's 23-year-old brother Dean, who works as metallurgist for Scholes-based wire making firm Cold Drawn Products, has flown out to Kenya to spend ten days with his sister over the Easter break.

The majority of the signatures on the petition were collected by Kerry's grandparents Geoff and Dorothy Greenhough, of Holdsworth Street, Cleckheaton. They have been going to the Tesco store in their home town for the past three weeks asking shoppers to sign it.

Mother-of-six Mrs Garnham said: "I am hoping we can get a lot more names on the petition before I go to Downing Street. There are still petition forms out at shops in the Cleckheaton area which I haven't collected yet.

"We need as much as support as possible to get the Foreign Office to put pressure on the Kenyans to give Kerry her passport back on a permanent basis so that she get on with her life in between the hearings.''

She added: "Dean has gone out to Kenya so that Kerry is not alone at Easter. We feel it is important that someone from the family is with her."

Last month Mrs Garnham revealed she had cut down on her phone calls to Kerry to twice a week because of the huge cost and that Kerry needed to get back to her job as a shipping manager in Dubai as her savings were running out fast.

The UN alleges Kerry helped an Australian catering company she worked for as a buyer steal forklift trucks, vehicles and containers worth £200,000 during the refugee crisis in Somalia three years ago.

Kerry, who was granted compassionate leave to visit her family earlier this year, strongly denies the charges and says she wasn't even in the country at the time. She has already been told it could take up to seven years for her case to be resolved.

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