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Austria Now Says 71 Bodies Thought to Be of Migrants Were in Truck Death of 71 Migrants in Austria Illustrates a Spreading Crisis in Europe
(about 3 hours later)
VIENNA — The legions of desperate migrants fleeing war and mayhem in the Middle East and Africa have long known they were risking harm from unscrupulous smugglers and death at sea to reach the safety of Europe. But it has became shockingly clear that they now face the same dangers within Europe’s own borders. VIENNA — Europe’s migration crisis continued to escalate on Friday, as the United Nations reported record numbers making their way across the Mediterranean to the Continent this year, and the authorities in Austria and Hungary sought to find the people responsible for the deaths of 71 people.
The decomposing bodies of 71 people, believed to include Syrians, based on a passport carried by one of the victims, were found on Thursday in the refrigerated back of a truck found abandoned on the outskirts of Vienna in the summer heat. The discovery came just as European leaders were meeting in a nearby palace to devise new ways to cope with the migration crisis. At least 150 people were also believed to have drowned at sea off western Libya, after a fishing boat sank on Thursday, Libyan and international relief officials said. The exact toll was unclear, but it had the potential to be among the highest this summer for refugees and migrants trying to reach European shores.
The Austrian police said on Friday that three people suspected of involvement had been detained in Hungary in connection with the deaths of those found in the truck, which included 59 men, eight women, three boys aged between seven and 10, and a girl. Ibrahim al-Attoushi, a Red Crescent official, said that 82 bodies had washed ashore and that about 100 people were still missing, Reuters reported.
An initial investigation, conducted jointly by Austrian and Hungarian officials, led to the arrests of three people believed to be in the lowest rank of a much wider Bulgarian-Hungarian human-trafficking ring, Hans Peter Doskozil, director of police in the eastern Austrian state of Burgenland told reporters on Friday. In Austria, the authorities reported that four children — three boys ages 7 to 10, and a toddler girl — were among the passengers found on Thursday in the back of a truck with no ventilation that was abandoned east of Vienna in the summer heat. The other passengers included 59 men and eight women.
“We believe that one perpetrator, a Bulgarian citizen of Lebanese descent, is the current owner of the vehicle,” Mr. Doskozil said. “Two other suspects who have been detained include a Bulgarian citizen and an individual in possession of a Hungarian identity card, whose nationality has not yet been determined, both believed to be the drivers of the truck.” A Syrian passport was found on one of the victims, leading the authorities to conclude that at least some of the victims were part of the throng of people fleeing war and turmoil in the Middle East and northern Africa.
The United Nations refugee agency reported that the number of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe had reached 310,000 this year, up from 219,000 in 2014.
Close to 200,000 people have landed in Greece this year and around 110,000 more have reached Italy, Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the refugee agency told reporters in Geneva.
More than 2,500 people have died at sea this year, not including those believed to be victims in Thursday’s sinking off Libya. In 2014, 3,500 died or were lost while trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.
“The way people are being packed onto boats is causing their deaths,” Ms. Fleming said.
At the root of many of the deaths are the ruthless practices of human traffickers who overload boats, cars, trucks and vans with those willing and able to pay the high cost to cross the Mediterranean or European borders.
The Austrian authorities believe that is what happened to the migrants who were discovered in the truck on Thursday.
Officials had initially said they expected to recover as many as 50 corpses from the truck, which was abandoned in the emergency lane of a highway southeast of Vienna, where the authorities believe it had been for 24 hours, after arriving from south of Budapest.
But once the authorities were able to open the rear hold of the vehicle, said Hans Peter Doskozil, director of police in the eastern Austrian state of Burgenland, they found more corpses than they had expected. They are now scrambling to identify the victims and have set up a hotline for anyone seeking information about a missing family member.
The authorities said it was too early to give an exact cause of death, but they noted that there was no ventilation in the sides of the truck, one of which was dented. It was not possible to say how long the dent had been there nor whether it had been caused by a traffic accident or by people inside trying to break through.
“We cannot say whether air was able to circulate through the cooling system or the roof,” Mr. Doskozil said, “but I believe that it is highly likely that people in this truck asphyxiated.”
The authorities said on Friday that four people suspected of involvement in the truck operation had been detained in Hungary. The Hungarian police said that three of those detained are Bulgarian, and that the fourth is Afghan.
An initial investigation, conducted jointly by Austrian and Hungarian officials, led to the detention of three of the people, and they are believed to be in the lowest rank of a much wider Bulgarian-Hungarian human-trafficking ring, Mr. Doskozil said.
“We believe that one perpetrator, a Bulgarian citizen of Lebanese descent, is the current owner of the vehicle,” he added. “Two other suspects who have been detained include a Bulgarian citizen and an individual in possession of a Hungarian identity card, whose nationality has not yet been determined — both believed to be the drivers of the truck.”
In a separate case, 10 Syrian migrants were injured early Friday when a van overturned on a highway in Hungary, the police said in a statement.In a separate case, 10 Syrian migrants were injured early Friday when a van overturned on a highway in Hungary, the police said in a statement.
The Austrian authorities said they would increase controls on the borders in response to the deaths and to the growing stream of people flowing into the country, but stressed they would not be able to stop every one of the roughly 3,000 trucks that enter the country from the east every day. The Austrian Red Cross said it expected as many as 4,000 people to cross the country’s eastern border over the weekend, and the authorities said they would increase controls. They emphasized, however, that they would not be able to stop each of the roughly 3,000 trucks that enter the country from the east every day.
News about the corpses instantly overshadowed the meeting of European leaders and transfixed the region with new worries that the scope and complexity of the crisis had escalated. The migrants found dead in Austria most likely followed a now-popular route from Greece, through the Balkans and Hungary, and toward the north. The movement is made possible by Europe’s open borders, which allow passage between member countries and is a fundamental part of life in the 28-nation bloc.
European Union officials have been struggling to find ways to control the tens of thousands of migrants who are now reaching the Continent, without forfeiting the free movement between member countries that is a fundamental part of life in the 28-nation bloc. Now its members are confronting human traffickers who are exploiting the open borders. Hungary reported a daily average of roughly 2,000 people cross its border with Serbia, but on Wednesday the number rose to 3,241 people, including 700 children — the highest number in a single day recorded this year, the United Nations refugee agency reported.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who said at a news conference “we are all shaken by this terrible news,” emphasized what she called the need for Europe to pull together and ease the migration crisis, part of the biggest wave of migrants since World War II. But the meeting ended on a discordant note with no apparent consensus on how to proceed. In a bid to deter the flow of refugees, Hungary has accelerated construction of a fence along its border with Serbia, but humanitarian-agency officials in Geneva described it as “a roundabout subsidy to the smugglers,” who charge refugees and migrants more money to get them past it.
The death toll at sea is already greater than 2,500, and it is rising almost every day, with news reports on Thursday that a ship carrying hundreds of migrants had sunk off the coast of Libya. Building walls “looks tough, it looks proactive, it looks as if you’re taking people’s complaints seriously that there are too many migrants,” Joel Millman, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, said. “It doesn’t work.”
On Friday, an official for the Red Crescent said that 82 bodies had washed ashore. “About 100 people are still missing,” said the official, Ibrahim al-Attoushi, Reuters reported.
Now the truck discovery has made it clear that the illegal trade in humans has broadened from arranging perilous journeys across the Mediterranean to profiteering from the tens of thousands now pouring in through the Balkans.
Until recently, the flow was mostly restricted to the southern European countries, particularly Italy. But as new routes through Greece and the Balkans have become popular, the pressure to stem the flow has broadened and deepened.
The people in the truck were thought to be among the refugees on their way through Central Europe toward the wealthier countries, particularly Germany, in the north.
Officials had initially said that they expected to recover as many as 50 corpses in the truck that was discovered Thursday after it was abandoned in the emergency lane of a highway southeast of Vienna.
But once the authorities were able to open the rear, refrigerated hold of the vehicle, which had no ventilation, Mr. Doskozil said, they found more corpses than they had expected. They are now scrambling to identify the victims and setting up a hotline for anyone seeking information about a missing family member.
No Africans were among the victims, Mr. Doskozil said, adding that a travel document found on one of the bodies led the authorities to believe the victims may have been a group traveling from Syria.
The Austrian police said they believe the 71 suffocated in the back of the refrigerated truck, which did not have any air circulation.
The vehicle was discovered on Thursday by a highway worker who alerted the police at about 11:40 a.m. that the truck, with Hungarian license plates, was parked in the emergency lane of a highway that links Budapest and Vienna, in the Neusiedl am See district, near the Hungarian border.
Mr. Doskozil said the truck had probably set off from east of Budapest on Wednesday and was abandoned either late that night or early Thursday.
Janos Lazar, chief of staff to Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, said that the authorities believed the truck had been part of a human-trafficking operation, and that the victims “were illegal migrants who were trying to reach the West through Hungary or with the help of Hungarians.”
Hungarian officials said they had assigned investigators to help the Austrians with the case.
“It is clear that this is a case of organized criminality where a lot of money is at stake and business is made out of human suffering,” Mr. Doskozil said.
The discovery was a new twist on a summer of tragedy for migrants, who have drowned at sea by the hundreds and been injured or worse in accidents during their attempts to reach safety and jobs in the European Union.
Just a day earlier, Italian officials announced the discovery of 50 bodies in the hold of another ship that appeared to have departed Libya bound for Italy.
The Balkan overland route has replaced the Mediterranean as the favored passage for migrants this summer. The change has severely affected Austria, which has been struggling to cope with the masses of migrants, and officials have grown increasingly concerned about smugglers.
Eighty people suspected of smuggling were detained between July 1 and Aug. 1, bringing the overall number to 278, the Interior Ministry in Vienna said. But this is only a small fraction of the more than 800 investigations into people-smuggling brought this year by prosecutors nationwide, many against unknown perpetrators, the ministry said.
Defendants convicted of smuggling for money face prison sentences of up to two years for a first offense, and up to five years for repeat offenders. Defendants convicted of “endangering the lives of others” or belonging to a criminal ring can face up to 10 years in prison.
Many migrants entering Hungary from Serbia are processed in a rudimentary way in southern Hungary and then take trains, at no charge, from the southern city of Szeged to Budapest.
Once there, they are discouraged from taking trains to Austria by the Hungarian authorities, who are responding with tough measures. Last weekend, the Hungarian police made an example of illegal travelers, hauling at least 175 people off a train headed west toward Munich, volunteer organizations said.
The nongovernmental groups say this sort of action encourages, albeit unintentionally, a tendency among the migrants to cross into Austria by road, hiding in taxis, private cars or trucks.
The meeting of European leaders ended not only inconclusively but also with outright dissent by the foreign ministers of Serbia and Macedonia, two nations on the path of the new route, who complained that they were not getting enough help to cope with the influx.
“Unless we have a European answer to this issue, none of us should be under any illusion that this will be solved,” Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki of Macedonia said.
Hungary’s hard line with the migrants has included the accelerated building of a fence along the border with Serbia in an effort to block the flow of tens of thousands who have worked their way up the length of the Balkans in recent weeks.
The border fence has threatened to complicate and even cut off what has become an increasingly accessible route for the migrants. In recent interviews, humanitarian aid workers and the migrants themselves said the fence would not stop the migrants but would force them to find other ways to make it to wealthy European Union countries farther north, often with the help of human traffickers.
The conference in Vienna on Thursday was originally intended to foster reconciliation among the nations of the Western Balkans, who themselves fought wars in the 1990s that produced what was then Europe’s largest post-1945 wave of refugees.
Germany and others are eager to classify all the former Yugoslav states, and Albania, as safe countries, so that their inhabitants desist from seeking asylum in Germany, choking accommodation and other resources needed for migrants from the Middle East and Africa.
But the current migrant crisis had already forced its way on to the agenda in recent weeks, and Thursday’s tragedy overshadowed any attempts to resolve the region’s problems.
Ms. Merkel; the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini; and Balkan heads of government attended the conference. Ms. Merkel and Chancellor Werner Faymann of Austria, expressing sorrow over the deaths, called them a chilling reminder of the need to give shelter to migrants fleeing war.
“This shows once more how necessary it is to save lives and to fight people smugglers,” Mr. Faymann said.
“Those who look back to World War II history know that there were people who depended then on asylum” to survive. Today, too, “it saves lives,” he added.
Images in the Austrian news media showed a white vehicle with a rear cooler compartment, emblazoned with the word “Hyza” in brown letters, with a chicken standing in for the letter Y, surrounded by police cars. A Slovakia-based company by the name of Hyza told the Austrian news agency APA that it had sold more than a dozen of its vehicles in 2014 but that it had no further knowledge about them.
Austria’s interior minister, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, called it a “dark day” and urged everyone across the European Union to move harshly against human traffickers. “These are not well-minded helpers,” she said. “They are not concerned with the welfare of the migrants. They care only about profit.”