The train was inspected in Tyrol, and was found to contain 44 men, 22 women and 28 children with Syrian origin.
They were offloaded from the train, and taken to the police headquarters in Innsbruck for initial questioning before being offered housing and assessment by the Red Cross.
According to the so-called Dublin II Regulation governing the treatment of refugees, potential asylum seekers must be sent back to the first EU country in which they arrived, which in this case is Italy.
The Italian government is obliged to handle any requests for asylum, as that is the country where they presumably first arrived in the European Union.
Last year, 1686 Syrians applied for asylum in Austria of their own accord. Of these, 667 were given asylum, 157 were denied. The government said that it would not send people back to Syria because of the war, but also did not grant all of them refugee status.
Member comments