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REFUGEE CRISIS

IMMIGRATION

Hungary asked to take over truck deaths probe

Austrian authorities have asked Hungary to take over the probe into the deaths of 71 refugees found in a truck on an Austrian motorway in August and thought to have suffocated shortly after leaving Budapest.

Hungary asked to take over truck deaths probe
The abandoned truck. Photo: Screen shot from video by Andi Schiel

Prosecutors in the eastern Burgenland state, where the gruesome cargo was discovered, were seeking a “centralised investigation of the entire criminal procedure through the Hungarian justice system”, spokesman Roland Koch told AFP.

The badly decomposing bodies of the 59 men, eight women and four children were found on August 27 inside an abandoned refrigerator truck on the A4 motorway, close to the Hungarian border.

Investigations revealed that the refugees – mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan –  had been picked up at Hungary's border with Serbia and transported to Austria.

An autopsy showed they had most likely suffocated while still in Hungary.

The government there has taken a controversially hard-line stance against migration amid Europe's worst such crisis since World War II.

So far, six people have been detained in connection with the case, which sparked international revulsion and highlighted the plight of migrants and refugees putting their lives in the hands of human traffickers to reach Europe.

But Koch said Austrian police would drop an arrest warrant against one of the suspects, a 32-year-old detained in Bulgaria who was due to be extradited to Austria.

The man was no longer a suspect in the case, Koch confirmed.

Another five men, four Bulgarians and an Afghan, are under arrest in Hungary over the tragedy.

More than half of the refugees have now been identified, an official source said. Four of the victims were buried in a cemetery in Vienna on Wednesday.

FAR-RIGHT

Germany issues entry ban to Austrian far-right activist Sellner

Radical Austrian nationalist Martin Sellner has been banned from entering Germany, it emerged on Tuesday, days after he was deported from Switzerland.

Germany issues entry ban to Austrian far-right activist Sellner

Sellner, a leader of Austria’s white pride Identitarian Movement, posted a video of himself on X, formerly Twitter, reading out a letter he said was from the city of Potsdam.

A spokeswoman for the city authorities confirmed to AFP that an EU citizen had been served with a “ban on their freedom of movement in Germany”.

The person can no longer enter or stay in Germany “with immediate effect” and could be stopped by police or deported if they try to enter the country, the spokeswoman said, declining to name the individual for privacy reasons.

READ ALSO: Who is Austria’s far-right figurehead banned across Europe?

“We have to show that the state is not powerless and will use its legitimate means,” Mike Schubert, the mayor of Potsdam, said in a statement.

Sellner caused an uproar in Germany after allegedly discussing the Identitarian concept of “remigration” with members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) at a meeting in Potsdam in November.

Reports of the meeting sparked a huge wave of protests against the AfD, with tens of thousands of Germans attending demonstrations across the country.

READ ALSO:

Swiss police said Sunday they had prevented a hundred-strong far-right gathering due to be addressed by Sellner, adding that he had been arrested and deported.

The Saturday meeting had been organised by the far-right Junge Tat group, known for its anti-immigration and anti-Islamic views.

The group is also a proponent of the far-right white nationalist Great Replacement conspiracy theory espoused by Sellner’s Identitarian Movement.

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