Austria detains three over death of 71 migrants in truck
http://www.gatewaymail.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Truck-where-the-suffocated-migrants-were-found.jpgAUSTRIA: NO fewer than three persons have been arrested as suspected kingpins in the death, apparently by suffocation, of 71 migrants suspected to be nationals of Syria.
Of the dead, four children – a girl between age of one or two, boys who ages ranged around eight to 10 years – and eight women, were among the casualties the Austrian authorities initially believed were between 20 and 50.
But more people were found to have been suffocated after the truck was towed away and the partially decomposed bodies were counted.
Syria, under President Bashar al-Assad, has faced civil war which claimed many lives in the last five years that fighting broke out over attempts to oust the incumbent president.
The suffocated migrants, found in a refrigerated truck left on an Austrian highway, were believed to have been abandoned in the human smuggling efforts to ferry people to safety in Europe.
Though Austrian police claimed on Friday that three people have been apprehended, but their Hungarian counterparts said that four persons have been slammed in jail in connection with the horrendous death, which attracted world outrage.
The GatewayMail learnt that Austrian authorities have commenced investigation into the death and indications emerged that a document found linked the deceased persons to Syrian nationals, who probably were fleeing from the war-ravaged Middle East country.
The police in Austria explained that two of the suspects being detained are Bulgarians while the third person has papers that identified him as a Hungarian.
The Police chief, Hans Peter Doskozil, said that one of the men was the owner of the truck who is a Bulgarian but Lebanese descent, and the two other suspects were likely drivers.
But in Budapest, Hungarian police spokeswoman, Viktoria Csiszer-Kovacs, disclosed that three Bulgarian citizens and one from Afghanistan are cooling their heels in detention over the death.
Hungarian Interior Minister, Johanna Mikl-Leitner stated that the death “should serve as a wake-up call for joint European action” over the influx of migrants into Europe, while the spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency in Geneva, Melissa Fleming, said that the suffocation was “absolutely shocking.”
“We believe this underscores the ruthlessness of people smugglers who have expanded their business from the Mediterranean Sea to the highways of Europe,” Fleming said, adding: “It shows they have absolutely no regard for human life, and that they are only after profit.”
She stressed: “It also shows the desperation of people seeking protection or a new life in Europe, and their only means is to submit themselves to these criminals.”
And on Thursday while speaking on the horrendous discovery, at the conference on refugee crisis, Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann, stated that the tragedy had showed how critically decisive for countries to work jointly to find panacea to the inflow of migrants, particularly to Europe.
“Today refugees lost the lives they had tried to save by escaping,” Faymann said, “but lost them in the hand of traffickers.”
His German counterpart, Angela Merkel, expressed shock and said she was “shaken by the awful news that up to 50 people lost their lives on their way to look for more security.”
“This reminds us that we in Europe need to tackle the problem quickly and find solutions in the spirit of solidarity,” Merkel, who was attending the conference, said.
