A jury found him guilty of smuggling and causing fatal bodily harm – but denied the charge of murder.
Against this background, the Latvian’s statements were considered a confession, said judge Gabriele Nemeskeri. He had pleaded guilty to smuggling, but not to murder – although he admitted that he knew that the 30 refugees he had locked in the hold for about eight hours without a break were not doing well. The defendant accepted the verdict. The prosecutor’s office gave no explanation. So it is not yet final.
“People are dying here, stop”
The prosecutor explained that the 30 refugees were waiting for the Latvians on October 19, 2021 in a forest on the border between Serbia and Hungary. Actually, they should have been split between two tractor vehicles because one didn’t show up, but they were all “sorted into” the small truck. According to the indictment, they were crouched in the hold without eating or drinking. After just under two hours, the oxygen in the vehicle had been used up. The refugees ripped out the seals on the doors to get air, knocked on the windows and doors and shouted: “People are dying here, stop”. The conditions were catastrophic, in the hold there was fear of death, the prosecutor emphasized.
When the transporter was finally stopped by army soldiers at the green border near Siegendorf, the refugees “fell out” of the vehicle. Two Syrians were already dead by then, they suffocated. The 19-year-old was able to escape but was arrested in Latvia two months later. According to the indictment, he is part of a larger smuggling organization, of which 19 members were convicted in April. It must have been his first trip. The student, who worked in a pizzeria, does not have a driver’s license. The prosecutor said he was hoping for “quick money”.
The accused admitted in court that he had made the towing trip. He was recruited as a driver, but did not know any details. He didn’t know that the tow tractors had brought 30 people into his vehicle, that the hold was tight and that the journey would take so long. He heard the screams but didn’t understand them at first and thought the refugees were talking to the two migrants who were sitting next to him in the passenger seat due to a lack of space. Later they told him that the other refugees were doing badly. But he didn’t think they would die.
In the end, however, he called his boss and told him that there was an emergency situation and that people could hardly breathe, the accused said. But he said it didn’t matter, he should just keep going. “At that moment I made my biggest mistake, not stopping,” said the 19-year-old. He only found out when he was arrested that two people had died. The defendant emphasized that he deeply regrets the situation: “I’ve thought a lot about this situation and I understood one thing: that I ruined my life.”
Some of the Syrians who rode in the hold described the conditions in the vehicle to the court. “If I had stayed in the car five minutes longer without air, I would have died. I saw a record of my life before my eyes,” said one. All 30 refugees got on after spending three to four days in the forest. After three to four hours of driving, they noticed that “there was no more oxygen”. They shouted in Arabic and English, banged on the driver’s window and doors, and contacted the tout who had organized the trip. He just said, “Wait a little longer.”
Victims were in poor health
About an hour before they were stopped at the Austro-Hungarian border, they got the door open and kept letting some air into the hold. The torn rubber seal on the side doors would also have resulted in air gaps. The two fugitives who ultimately suffocated were sitting roughly in the middle of the hold between the partition and the door – where the least air could get.
Expert Wolfgang Denk explained that the two Syrians had suffocated on Hungarian territory – probably several hours before they were found. The fact that these two died was due to their position in the vehicle and their poor health. The 37-year-old fatality was underweight, had a congenital funnel chest and bronchitis, and he was also diagnosed with a resolved corona infection. The second, a 33-year-old, was also underweight and had the onset of pneumonia and a cyst in the kidney area.
Source: Nachrichten
