They had been locked up for two days, cold and hungry, in the trailer of a truck that left Romania and headed for France.
Seven boys between 12 and 17 were discovered by the traffic police, on the advice of the truck driver who had heard suspicious noises, on board the vehicle stopped in a service area of the Turin ring road.
The young people were fed with food and water by the agents, who also provided them with some blankets to warm up. Nobody speaks Italian; one of them, who knows a few words in English, said he was Afghan and was traveling with his two brothers. He got on the truck in Romania, after paying a thousand euros to a man, together with two other pairs of brothers, the completely unrelated driver.