A 19-year-old Latvian smuggler was sentenced Monday (June 27th) to seven years in prison in Austria for the death of two Syrian migrants who suffocated in the mini-van he was driving, the APA news agency reported.
The two men died of suffocation in October, in a van intercepted at the Hungarian border where 27 other migrants were piled up.
The driver, who had fled before being arrested in Latvia, was found responsible for inflicting fatal injuries on the two Syrians, but not murder, according to APA.
He accepted the verdict.
However, the prosecutor can appeal.
Read alsoMigrants: smugglers more than ever in the crosshairs
The Austrian government announced in May the dismantling of a network of smugglers operating in central Europe and the arrest of 205 people for their alleged role in this trafficking of tens of thousands of Syrian illegal immigrants, including the two who died in the mini-van. .
The investigation, which started in early 2021, made it possible to trace the network suspected of having transported more than 36,000 children and adults from Hungary, wishing to reach Western Europe, in particular Germany and France.
Once in Austria, these migrants were transferred to other groups to continue their journey.
The network, one of the largest dismantled in Austria in recent years, had amassed over the months an estimated sum of 152 million euros.
The arrests took place in the Alpine country, but also in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, while 80 vehicles were seized by investigators.
Read alsoMigrants: a vast criminal network of smugglers dismantled in Calais
Austria, like France, Germany, Norway and Sweden have reintroduced since 2015 - and Denmark since 2016 - random identity checks at their borders, citing the migration crisis and/or the terrorist threat, and renew them regularly.
The Court of Justice of the European Union had criticized these checks at the end of April, recalling that they should not exceed a period of six months.
