Hero Syrian refugees save 7-year-old girl from pedophile at Greek migrant camp

Three Syrian refugees have told of how they rescued a young girl from the clutches a suspected pedophile at a squalid camp housing 14,000 migrants in Greece. Bashar al-Ali, 29, Mohammed Al-Mulhem, 26, and 24-year-old Dlar Sedo, 24, told the Daily Mail about how they had heard the girl's father shout "he's trying to rape my daughter", and rushed to her aid.

They found the girl, who is seven, and safe with her father, in a state of undress with an Afghan man in some woods behind a block of temporary toilets.

The trio are part of a group of refugees at the Idomeni camp on the border between Greece and Macedonia who have formed a neighbourhood watch to keep order amongst its estimated 14,000 residents. They admitted that many of their colleagues wanted to beat or even kill the man, but Al-Ali and Sedo were determined to march him to the police to see justice done. He was arrested by authorities, who are now investigating the incident.

"The Afghan man took her behind the toilets and then she started to scream," said al-Ali, a chef from Deir ez-Zuor. "I ran over and saw that he was trying to remove her T-shirt and trousers. I grabbed him and started kicking him."

Sedo, a Kurdish tailor from Aleppo, added that they had to march the main a mile through the camp, and protect him from vigilante justice.

"We all heard the screams. People wanted to kill him but we said no, it's not our job to kill him," he said. "We are in a civilised country and we need to let the police take care of this.

"To tell you the truth, we didn't see it happen. We couldn't be sure whether it was a real crime or if it was invented by her father to get revenge on someone, for example.

"So we took control and protected the man from being beaten up, but at the same time, we didn't let him go. We wanted the police to deal with it."

"I felt angry because the girl was my nationality,' added Al-Mulhem, also from Isis-held Deir ez-Zuor. "I travelled from Syria with a group of friends and relatives, and I'm always the man who protects them. We didn't let anyone beat him or kick him."