Bulgaria: 18 migrants found dead in truck near capital

Bulgaria arrests five human traffickers after a truck with eighteen dead migrants was found near Sofia.

The Bulgarian prosecutor’s office opened a case on the fact of death of people against six citizens of Bulgaria. A truck with dead Afghan migrants was found on a dirt road near the Bulgarian capital, near the village of Lokorsko. Passers-by found an abandoned truck 20 kilometers from Sofia and reported to the police. There were 52 refugees in the truck who were hiding behind stacks of firewood. Eighteen of them died 8-10 hours before the discovery of the truck – they suffocated. According to some reports, among the dead was a 6-7 year old child, according to others, the youngest victim was a teenager.

The preliminary investigation showed, as deputy prosecutor, head of the National Investigation Service Borislav Sharafov told the media, that the migrants knocked on the wall of the driver’s cab for a long time so that he would stop the car, but he did not react and continued to move.

As the prosecutor explained, 18 Afghans died from lack of oxygen in a closed truck, which was filled with them, “like sardines in a can.” He said:

“The victims died slowly and painfully. This case demonstrates extreme cruelty and shows that migrants are treated like a commodity that needs to be transported from one place to another, whether they are alive or dead.”

The surviving 34 migrants were hospitalized, their condition is stable. They were soaking wet and cold and apparently had not eaten in days. Five accused were detained, against the sixth, who managed to leave the country, a European arrest warrant was issued.

According to the prosecutor’s office, the criminal network transported migrants from the border with Turkey to Serbia, from where they continued on their way to their destinations – to Germany, Great Britain, France. The leader of the criminal group was previously sentenced to five months for human trafficking (conditionally). Moving to Europe was not cheap for each migrant – they paid traffickers 7,000 euros each. Transportation was carried out at least twice a month, in each group of migrants there were at least 25-35 people.

In Bulgaria, the tragedy caused shock as one of the largest of its kind. Thousands of people trying to escape war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia choose this path, and Bulgaria has faced a significant increase in migration flows from neighboring Turkey last year, writes CNN Greece. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Bulgaria, last year the Bulgarian border guards stopped 164,000 attempts to illegally cross the border. A year earlier, the number of illegal crossings prevented was 55,000.

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