“The Police will be recommending that charges be brought against eight people with relation to the case in which 71 people were found dead in a refrigerated lorry in Austria last year, and three Bulgarian citizens are still wanted”, the head of the Standby Police’s National Bureau of Investigation (NNI) Illegal Immigration Division announced at a press conference.
Lieutenant Colonel Zoltán Baross told reporters: “When they crossed the Hungarian-Austrian border the perpetrators already knew that the people they were transporting in the refrigerated lorry were no longer alive”.
“The criminal organisation was directed by an Afghan citizen living under asylum in Hungary, who was later stripped of this status. Among the eight suspects currently in custody is a Bulgarian-Lebanese man whose job it was to acquire the vehicles required for the people smuggling, while the others are Bulgarian citizens who were involved as drivers. The suspects include the 25 year old man who was driving the refrigerated lorry”, he stated. “The greed and unscrupulousness of the criminal organisation’s Afghan head was what led to the tragedy”, Mr. Boross said in summary.
The authorities were unable to track the route of the presumably billions of forints of the organisation’s income, with respect to which the Police Lieutenant Colonel told reporters: The Afghan man sent the money to Afghanistan; his accomplices took with them bagful’s of cash or it was wired via an untraceable money transfer system”.
Head of the Standby Police’s National Bureau of Investigation (NNI) International Crime Division Csaba Szabó recalled: The refrigerated lorry was found in a layby on the Austrian A4 motorways on 27 August last year, with 71 dead migrants inside. The investigation began in Austria, parallel to which the Hungarian authorities also launched criminal proceedings because of people smuggling. In autumn 2015, the Austrian authorities passed the case over to their Hungarian colleagues, who merged the two cases.
Mr. Baross told reporters: A sales agreement was found in the abandoned vehicle, on the basis of which it was ascertained that the truck had been purchased in Kecskemét. The truck was used to pick up migrants who had been illegally smuggled into Hungary near the southern border at dawn, from where it proceeded to enter Austria via the M5, M0 and M1 motorways. Police appropriated 1500 hours of video recordings from 24 locations; this is how they were able to reconstruct the route taken by the truck.
The Bulgarian-Lebanese citizen who purchased the vehicle was apprehended at the Kiszombor border crossing station when he tried to escape towards Romania. Further suspects were arrested in or near the flat of the Afghan man who is regarded as the head of the criminal organisation. It also transpired that the suspects of a previous criminal investigation involving Bulgarian drivers also belonged to the same criminal organisation.Download
Hungarian experts came to the same conclusion as their Austrian colleagues: the 71 migrants died of asphyxiation within 3 hours of being locked in the vehicle, he told reporters.
The Afghan man who is registered as having been the main organiser of the people smuggling ring arrived in Hungary in 2013 and has been the subject of police action on several occasions with relation to various violations including drug abuse, disturbing the peace and speeding. One of the other suspects came to Hungary because he was wanted in Bulgaria for drunken driving. It was he who organised the schedule of the Bulgarian drivers and coordinated the transportation. The drivers were Bulgarian citizens who generally lived in poor conditions and made a living from casual work.
With regard to the operations of the criminal organisation, Mr. Baross said: It has been proven that the organisation smuggled people from the territory of Serbia to Austria on practically a daily basis from February 2015. They later acquired higher capacity trucks that enabled them to smuggle 60-80 people at a time. Detectives have proven them to have committed twenty-five smuggling trips, ten of which were uncovered in Germany, eight in Austria and seven in Hungary.
Lt. Col. Baross also told reporters that people were often sick or passed out because of the lack of oxygen during these inhumane journeys.
With relation to the smuggling, he explained: The Afghan chief organiser was in contact with his compatriots in Serbia who grouped the migrants according to their intended destinations, and it was they who “walked” the illegal immigrants across the border onto Hungarian territory during the night. The groups, whose numbers ranged from 7 to 100, were picked up by the Bulgarian drivers and smuggled on towards Austria. The trucks were usually also accompanied by two cars, one in front and one behind.
With regard to the vehicles used, Mr. Baross said they were not in good condition and were only designed to run until they were apprehended or broke down. On one occasion, a truck that was overloaded with migrants suffered explosive tyre failure.
From June 2015, the organisation also began smuggling illegal immigrants who had been placed in receiving stations. They charged an average of 1200-1500 euros-a-time to smuggle people from the Serbian border to Austria, while migrants had to pay between 4-6 thousand euros to get from Afghanistan to Germany. The perpetrators smuggled 1106 people while the criminal organisation was in operation.
The Police will be recommending that criminal charges be brought against four people in the case for manslaughter committed in a criminal organisation, while the remaining suspects will be charged with aggravated human trafficking in a criminal organisation, although this is only expected to occur later because it will take time to officially put forward the documents of the case. Some of the suspects have made full confessions, while others have made confessions that are not self-incriminating, and some continue to deny any involvement.
Head of Europol’s European Migrant Smuggling Centre (EMSC) Robert Crepinko stressed: European police have so far identified 12 thousand people who may be linked to people smuggling, and 3500 illegal immigrants who attempted to reach Europe via the Mediterranean have lost their lives so far this year.
“For the criminals, people smuggling is only about the money; 5-6 billion euros in financial transactions were performed with relation to people smuggling last year alone”, he added.
(MTI)
