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LAST UPDATE | 18 Feb 2023
BULGARIAN POLICE HAVE arrested seven people, an official said today, a day after the bodies of 18 Afghans were found in an abandoned truck outside the capital Sofia.
Bulgaria’s deadliest recorded people smuggling incident comes as it struggles with an increase in illicit border crossings.
The truck was transporting 52 people hidden under wooden planks, and 18 died from suffocation, initial investigations showed.
Investigators discovered a gruesome scene with bodies scattered on the grass around the vehicle.
The group of Afghans was coming from Turkey and headed for western Europe.
Four Bulgarians have already been detained as suspects, and three fresh arrests were announced today.
“I can confirm seven people have been arrested,” an interior ministry official told AFP.
Another government official said the suspected ringleader was among those arrested. He had earlier received a suspended jail sentence of five months for people smuggling.
The government has proposed tightening laws on people smuggling as the majority of smugglers are just fined or get suspended prison sentences.
The 34 people who were rescued on yesterday were taken to hospital.
Some of them are being treated for carbon monoxide poisoning after having inhaled exhaust pipe gases as their hiding place was not well insulated, according to Spas Spaskov, a senior doctor at the Emergency Hospital Pirogov in Sofia.
“The oxygen they were getting was very limited, and they had no water, that’s why they are severely dehydrated. They did not eat for several days,” he told the Nova private TV channel.
Health Minister Asen Medjidiev told journalists earlier that the migrants were “cold and drenched, and they certainly had not eaten for a few days,”
The health ministry said the dead included a child thought to be six or seven years old, but Sarafov said the youngest victim was a teenager.
The country has stepped up controls along the 234-kilometre barbed wire fence covering almost the entire border with Turkey.
Border police thwarted 164,000 “irregular crossing” attempts in 2022, compared to 55,000 in 2021, interior ministry figures show.
Austria and the Netherlands in December blocked Sofia’s bid to join the Schengen border-free zone.
Bulgaria has faced mounting accusations it is abusing people trying to cross over from Turkey, with asylum seekers saying they have been pushed back, locked up, stripped and beaten.
Bulgarian authorities have repeatedly denied the accusations.
Three police officers died when vehicles smuggling people rammed their cars last year.
Sofia has asked the EU for €2 billion to reinforce the border fence and improve surveillance, but Brussels has so far refused.
Today’s gruesome discovery drew comparisons to previous cases.
In August 2015, at the peak of Europe’s migration crisis, the bodies of 71 migrants, including a baby girl, were found piled up in the back of a poultry refrigerator lorry left in Austria.
A Hungarian court has jailed an Afghan national and three Bulgarians for life over the case.
In 2019, 39 Vietnamese migrants were found dead in a refrigerated truck in Britain shortly after it had crossed the Channel from mainland Europe.
Several similar but less deadly incidents have been recorded in recent years, including in Northern Ireland, Croatia, Italy and the Netherlands.
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I’m astonished that the figure is as high as one in ten. I would have thought one in 1000 would be far more realistic.
Mostly unethical parasites who care nothing for their country or countrymen.
Spot on, I’m surprised the UN hasn’t sanctioned Ireland for slave trading, as we seem to be exporting and importing people like its gone out of fashion.
We have no government.
We only have Stoogeen receivers, put in place by the corrupt/criminal Banking “elites”.
Who are these 10%? & can you give me a loan, I promise I’ll pay you back.
A Vichy govt, thats all we have.
What do they expect. We’ve had broken promises from this Govt. The one of the last thirteen years featuring Brian Cowen, Ahern and Micky Martin was a poster case for duplicity and will tie up the courts for decades to come. Prior to that we had Reynolds and Haughey and a hundred others. One in Ten, how is is that high.
I’d say the business leaders are distraught. They’re only accountable to their shareholders, and rightly so.
Whats happening here Michelle at the journal another another excellent article in one day.
Dermot, are you suggesting that not all of my articles are excellent? :P
Michelle not suggesting that for a minute but I am waiting on the article on judicial corruption ,please do not let me have to wait to long.
Hands off!! I saw her first Dermot. Hey Michelle is that the only picture of you online or is there one with a better resolution? btw
I wouldn’t believe on word uttered from their mouths and I have zero faith in this so called government.
I seriously (like a fool) actually believed they would follow through on half the promises and voted on a *anything but ff* basis.
I will never ever as long as I exist on this planet vote for anything to do with this shower.
Mark, though he was pretty clear, never again , mind you I include Finn fail in that too, and labour, to me their all self obsessed , cowardly, and date I say it , creepy
people voted this Govt. in because while they are crap and woeful they are still better than Fianna Fraud, being better than FF is easy but it still doesn’t mean that people should support you.
Well said Mike . There is nothing they can do or say ever again that will
have me believe them, FF ,the Greens are also in the same category ,
@ mark/paddy/michael j etc.
Are twitter copping on to your false accounts and the complaints of your constant trolling and verbal bullying.
Why should I stoop down to your level to explain myself to you.
You are a known and reported troll and perhaps (with the exception of the idiots you are paid to protect) a gobsh*te.
Now there’s a good little boy/girl and crawl back under your rock.
The only media you can trust is social media , people don’t trust businesses but media is a business there not doing it just so we can have information they want to make a profit, so if you don’t trust business don’t trust media, media is the most ruthless business of all , did the media do any investigative journalism during the boom while our politicians screwed us ! NO ! Wake up we have a biased media !
Glad to see somebody has brains on here.
The media just tries to brainwash us. The church got away with it for a long time and still are with some people.
Companies are PLCs mostly, focus on short to medium term goals, and shareholders are brain washed onto allowing directors receive excessive pay and pensions,
A head of a bank in Ireland is not the same as a head banker in England or France , most of them wouldn’t get a job elsewhere on that money??? At lest that is the perception
Like this mornings statement about wind power and 30000 jobs absolute bulls***e.Pet rabbit the turbines won’t be built on everycross roads in the country more lies.
People don’t trust the government that they themselves elected?
Not when they immediately turn round and not only forget their normal pre-election promises (which we’ve come to accept as par for the course — which says a lot in and of itself), but also the pre-election committments they publicly signed up to (like college fees, where Labour made great PR hay from signing pledges before the election) and even their basic party platforms (ike burning senior bank bondholders, which was in both parties’ pre-election manifestos).
I mean, you might *think* you elected this government, but it’s hardly the government you voted for…
Not when they lied to us to get into power…
Never again. FG ,FF, Lab, Greens. NEVER .
Actually Mark I didn’t vote for this government. The candidate I voted for as number 1 got in and isn’t part of the government.
But among those many that don’t trust the government will be people who did and will trot into the polling office and vote for FG and Lab … and then say they don’t trust them.
It’s bizarre.
many vote for best of a bad lot and know from past experience it will be FF or FG in power with a deal with smaller party.
ACCOUNTABILITY! is key. Until that happens, expect more of the same old “lies for votes”. We (the public) have a responsibility. Thinking otherwise, would be an illusions.
Government lol, still roughly same numbers, allowed senior civil servants include bonus thus avoiding 10 recent pay cut, why go on ? But who the hell do you vote for
One in 10? That many!
I’m amazed that’s it only 1 in 10, says all you need to know about the majority of people in Ireland when it comes to electing their nepotistic politicians, parish pump is alive and well! Irish politics can be summed up thus…government of the gombeens, by the gombeens, for the gombeens!
During the last election campaign kenny and gilmore etc “talked the talk” but when it came to “walking the walk” they turned out to be lame ducks .
They pulled off the biggest con job in the history of the state.
Exactly. FF/FG/Lab are still getting about 60% of the vote. One in five say they will vote for FF, a party that has proven to be a malign cancer in our society again and again and incapable of reform.
Geldof was right, banana republic,
arse licking peasants on the periphery of Europe
Sad and shocking statistics for our country.
The only solution I see is for RTE to make more TV programs with more entrepreneurial spirit like,
Feargal Quinn fixes your hospital
Feargal Quinn teaches you how to cook (efficiently!)
Fealgal Quinn’s Animal Hospital (pet cemetery more like it!)
Feargal Quinn’s guide to mental wellbeing (on the cheap)
Fealgal Quinn’s guide to cheap funerals and
Fealgal Quinn’s The Joy of se* Nah, step too far.
Trusting the media and government more than business is a dangerous road to go down
Trust neither vote for independents and don’t buy or believe newspapers. Very simple. People power will always win we just need to stick together.
Do you trust independents like Pinkie Wallace and Healy-Rae?
Big march on the 9th February in town … Unfortunately organised by SIPTU but a march none the less …. People power is our only chance now ..,, get these fools out….
The unions are a big part of the problem would put me off going I don’t support them in any way.Their as bad as the politicians.
Stephen, trust business , no way, have you forgotten banks and property developers hold the greatest level of responsibility for this mess, followed closely by government and our watch dogs
The only one in the world you can trust is your mother…when she’s sober.
Shock horror ! Always trust the journal ..hope u ain’t lying too me ..girrrr
“How can people trust the harvest, unless they see it sown?” – Mary Renault
Who could trust the bunch of EU lapdogs ? I mean they are a an absolute joke to this nation…….LEAVE THE EURO !!! and dump Kenny and the rest of the goons in Brussels
David Higgins must be on holidays
Until they start locking up those that are corrupt there will be no major investment in this Country, Outsidrrs looking in wouldnt trust us an inch and who could blame them
Yet we continue to want government involvement in healthcare etc.
If we’re never going to trust them, why do we continue to vote for the status quo each election?
What is the choice we all know FF or FG will get in with a deal with a smaller party.
Would be interested to see the figures in how many people actually hate this Govt and would vote them out (or worse) if given the chance.
Eamonn Gilmore accused Aherne,Biffo & McGreevey of economic treason before he got into government ,then he lied and was shown up for it on video tape in Mullingar, Now our great Labour (HA HA ) Leader punsihes the people at the bottom of society and he and his wife rip us off with large pay packets. I hope the Unions have seen through the Workers Labour Party WHAT A JOKE OF A GOVERNMENT
Businesses just follow the example of government – the government feed us horse sh-t and businesses follow with horse meat. We accept whatever we are fed.
Politicians and bankers can’t be trusted.
Further details by searching in Google for ‘Windle stops swindle’
A Chara
A Taxi Driver
i never trust lying ratcatchers
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