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Photo: DPA
The suffocation of two Syrian refugees in a small truck in Austria has consequences for a 19-year-old: a jury in Eisenstadt in Burgenland found the man guilty of smuggling and bodily harm with a fatal outcome on Monday.
As reported by the Austrian news agency APA, among others, the court did not follow the accusation of murder.
According to ORF, the man had pleaded guilty to smuggling.
He also stated that he knew that the migrants were not doing well.
However, he denied any intent to kill.
The verdict is not yet legally binding.
In the course of the trial, the public prosecutor's office described the dramatic struggle for survival of the migrants in the hold.
Accordingly, a total of 30 people were included during the approximately eight-hour drive.
When the oxygen ran out, in their desperation they also ripped out the seals on the doors and tried to draw attention to their situation by screaming.
The small truck was stopped near the Hungarian border last October.
The 19-year-old driver from Latvia was initially able to escape, but was later caught in his home country.
According to the Austrian authorities, he was part of a smuggling network that is said to have smuggled tens of thousands of refugees - most of them Syrians - from Hungary to Austria.
In May, Austria's Interior Ministry said more than 200 suspects had been arrested in crackdowns on the network in Central and Eastern Europe.
The case brought back memories of the Parndorf refugee tragedy
The case is reminiscent of the discovery of 71 suffocated refugees in a truck in Austria in August 2015, which caused horror around the world.
The people, who came from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, were crammed into refrigerated trucks by smugglers on the Serbian-Hungarian border and finally left behind on a motorway in Parndorf in Burgenland.
In 2019, a Hungarian court sentenced four people smugglers to life imprisonment.
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