Prosecutors in Hungary charged two Romanian men with human trafficking, accusing them of trying to smuggle more than 100 migrants from Hungary to Austria in a lorry last June. They left the migrants trapped in the summer heat. One of the two men was charged with attempted murder and excessive cruelty against several people, including children…
The prosecutor said the two men packed 106 illegal migrants into a lorry near the Hungarian village of Morahalom, which is near the Serbian border in late June 2015.
All the migrants were squeezed into a space of 10 square metres, and there was little or no ventilation. A few minutes after departure, they began to bang on the locked doors.
Leaving the migrants helpless, the two men left them and drove off in another car towards Romania. The doors of the lorry were still locked. Fortunately, the trapped migrants managed to escape after they forced open one of the doors.
“There were children and babies as well inside the lorry … the people could have died within 20-25 minutes after departure,” the prosecutors said.
“The doors could not be opened from inside, and several people had already fallen unconscious and were in a life-threatening state due to the lack of oxygen,” they added. The two men are currently in detention and the Szeged court will rule in the case.
In August of 2015, 71 people were found dead in an refrigerated lorry in Austria. (Reporting by Krisztina Than; Editing by Dominic Evans)
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