Migrant crisis: Austrian tragedy suspects arrested as second truck found

Three children are in a critical condition after being rescued from a lorry in Austria that contained 26 migrants, police said. The lorry was stopped in Braunau district yesterday and the Romanian driver was arrested after a chase, reports said. Meanwhile a Hungarian court ordered the preliminary rrest of four suspects in the deaths of 71 migrants found in an abandoned truck in Austria. The court agreed with prosecutors that the three Bulgarians and one Afghan should be remanded in custody for a month while investigations into Thursday’s tragedy continue.

[They should be jailed] due to the exceptional nature of the crime, the subsequent deaths of the smuggled persons and the perpetration of the criminal act of people-smuggling in a businesslike manner.

Hungarian prosecutors

The four suspects – the three Bulgarians are aged 29, 30 and 50, while the Afghan is 28 years old – were in separate cars that arrived in a convoy into the courtyard of the courthouse in Kecskemet, some 90 kilometres (55 miles) south of Budapest. Police believe the men are low-ranking members of one of the numerous and often unscrupulous human trafficking gangs that prey on many of the tens of thousands migrants coming to Europe.

World migrants