ANYBODY and everybody who has made threatening telephone calls to the home of refugee aid campaigners Anna and Darrell Edwards must be traced.

They must then be identified, named, shamed, prosecuted and severely punished.

Let there be no excuses from the authorities about the calls being impossible to trace. Let there be no nonsense about a lack of evidence or a lack of resources.

If this couple were politicians, VIPs or had certain connections in high places, and were threatened by telephone with home invasion and murder, the perpetrators might expect to be in custody within a few days.

As Anna and Darrell, together with friend Nikka Pomponi, have done a great deal more good than countless politicians, VIPs and well-connected people, they deserve the same protection.

These three fine volunteers, as Swindon Advertiser readers already know, are supplying donated provisions to the Calais refugees who currently face winter on a squalid campsite.

Anna, Darrell and Nikka are motivated not by a ballot box, a desire for fame or lucrative seats in a boardroom, but rather by simple compassion toward their fellow human beings.

That compassion has brought them to the attention of the rancid-souled living sewage who inevitably pop up whenever the refugee crisis is mentioned.

Anna and Darrell can at least take some comfort from the knowledge that people who make threats over the telephone are almost without exception too cowardly to spew their venom in public, much less in a face-to-face encounter, but this in no way lessens the seriousness of what has happened.

The last time we looked, the maximum sentence for threatening to kill was 10 years.