Europe’s migrant crisis: the truck that shocked the world

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0:35BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. There are three graves. Simple, made from grey marble, on a raised platform on the edge of the graveyard. And there's a tin roof over them to protect them from the elements and give some shade. and above the graves a photograph of two young men and a young woman.

1:09Hazem is saying that he visits the graveyard twice a week. The family will come here and sit here and they clean the graves. They bring sometimes food and do stuff for them to eat and stay here with the other family members. Hazem Khali and his family have been conducting this sad ritual for nearly 10 years now ever since the summer of 2015 when an unprecedented number of migrants set out on a journey to seek safety in Europe they came from the Middle East and beyond two of Hazem's children were part of that exodus so was his younger brother but there was to be no happy ending for them. All three died on the road and in the most horrific of circumstances.

2:03I'm Nick Thorpe and in Crossing Continents I'll be asking how their deaths could have been prevented.

2:16In Hazem's home in the town of Hanke his wife Gaurie serves tea. We're in northern Iraq, not far from the border with Turkey.

2:31So, Hazem is saying that Alin, Alin, they were in school. Our translator is called Rojan. And his brother was working in another city, which is Erbil. He was working in a hotel. I think you have some photographs of them on your telephone. Elin is a slim, thoughtful-looking 14-year-old with straight shoulder-length hair. In this one, she is crouching on the shingle beside a river, the Tigris, I guess, which flows close to their home. Alend is two years older, a bit taller than his sister, but very much like her.

3:14She was very good at school and she loved English language and she wanted to study at the university after school What about Alend? What were his plans in life? Alend also was good at school, he was very clever he wanted to be a doctor in the future And then there was Heresh, Hazem's younger brother hardly more than a child himself He's 21 in this photograph. He has short hair. He's looking into the camera wearing a checkered shirt, looking very serious. Hazim, please tell me more about why you felt the need to send your children to Europe.

4:02So he's saying the main reason was ISIS attacking the Yazidi community, and we saw by our eyes that people from our community getting killed. Hazim is a Yazidi, a religious minority often persecuted by fundamentalist Muslims. In August 2014, ISIS, the so-called Islamic State, overran Sinjar, the main city of the Yazidis in northern Iraq, not far from here. Thousands were killed. 7 ,000 women and young girls were kidnapped as sex slaves. and 400 ,000 people were forced to flee across the desert to towns like Hanke on the shore of the River Tigris, where Hazem and his family lived. Before ISIS coming, the children wanted to go to Europe to have a better future than here, so they didn't want to send them.

4:58But after ISIS coming to Sinjar and attacking the Yazidi community because they only attacked Yazidis, Then he decided to let the children go to Europe, maybe to have a better future. Hazem shows me a photo. There's the family. Hazem on the right, his two children in the middle, and their uncle Heresh on the left. There's a date stamped onto the picture. This was the last picture he took with the family. It was like on 5 August 2015. and the place is the border between Turkey and Iraq. So this was the last time he saw them. He drove them to the border and then he said the last word, that goodbye and take care.

5:46And he didn't hug them because he said he's going to meet them sooner. So to not make them feel sad or feel alone.

5:58Franza prison in Bulgaria, a forbidding fortress of a building surrounded by watchtowers at the foot of the Balkan mountains. Inside, a smooth-skinned, oval-faced man with prominent lips, Matody Georgiev, 39 years old, sits opposite me. The room has one small window looking out onto the yard. Throughout our conversation, three prison guards in body armour, fingering their truncheons sit with us. Because Metodi is serving a life sentence for manslaughter, mass manslaughter. It was to men like this, a long chain of men, that Hazem entrusted his children on the long road to Germany. In 2015, on 12th May, I arrived in Hungary.

6:51In 2015, on May 12th, I arrived in Hungary and met an Afghan man and started working with him in, well, in human trafficking. My job was to find drivers. We would pick people up from the Hungarian border and take them to Austria and Germany. I worked like this in Hungary for about three months. How did you feel towards all those people you were moving? The first time you feel sorry for them, but after the fifth, you don't. No-one's forcing them to do it. They're prepared to die on the road rather than go back to the countries they came from. By August 2015, thousands of asylum seekers a day were crossing the Serbian border into Hungary.

7:36Metodi and his gang were taking at least 200 migrants a week from that border to Germany. Then, one day in late August, Metodi took a call from his boss, an Afghan living in Hungary called Samsoryama Lahu. It was an emergency, he said. He said there were about 120 people in the forest who had been waiting for two days and they were hungry and they didn't have any water and they needed to be picked up urgently because no one else could do it. Our group ended up going to pick them up under pressure because the Afghan told the drivers, and also me, that if we didn't pick up these people and don't find a way, we might as well go away and head back to Bulgaria.

8:21So Metodi agreed. And just before five in the morning of the 26th of August, 71 people were loaded into the back of a truck in the forest near the Hungarian town of Morahalom, just across the border from Serbia. At this point, it was nearly three weeks since Hazem's brother and children had left northern Iraq. Back at home, Hazem's phone had been pinging with regular updates. Hedish and the children were making good progress. Hazem had paid a smuggler extra, $8 ,000 for each of the three passengers for the through trip. Luxury transport, no rubber dinghies and no trucks. It would be like a series of taxis all the way to Germany, he was told.

9:14They were in touch on WhatsApp, doing calls, video calls, and he's saying that Alan and Hirsch, they were always sending him pictures. So this picture, they were in Bulgaria, in the forest. And then he showed you another picture, it was like the last time he talked to him on WhatsApp. So you can see the date, the time. So this is on the 24th of August 2015. This was the last call. He screenshot the call. And where were they then? Serbia. The last call, they told him that they're in Serbia, and he was happy because he thought, like, Serbia is also a European country, and that's it. They just arrived.

9:59They told him that we are going by taxi to Germany. And he was so happy. He thought, like, they arrived, and that's it. But Herisch and the two children would never make it to Germany. I'm standing on a bridge overlooking a busy motorway near the village of Parndorf in eastern Austria, right on the border with Hungary. Just below me I can see the place on the hard shoulder of the motorway where a white van was abandoned in late August 2015. Several dozen dead migrants have been found in the back of a lorry in a motorway lay-by in Austria. It was a refrigerated food lorry. 71 persons are dead. 59 men, 8 women and 4 children.

10:5359 men, 8 women and 4 children. The doors had been wired shut, the refrigeration system was off and there were no vents. In his Bulgarian prison cell, Metody Georgiev told me he had helped to buy that truck from a car dealer in Hungary a few days earlier. A truck with a driver's cab and a separate metal box behind. It was designed to carry frozen meat, the kind of truck that, in order to function properly, needs to be sealed. How were the people in the back of that van that day, how were they supposed to breathe?

11:32The truck, even though it was refrigerated, was supposed to have holes made in it. A drill was found in Ventsy's car, which I had told him to go by and use to make the holes. Ventsy is Ventsislav Todorov, another member of the gang. We'll meet him in a moment. The gang knew that if they drilled holes, the migrants in the back would have more air to breathe. In the end, no holes were made because, as I told you, there wasn't supposed to be any work that night and we had to do the job at the last minute under pressure from the Afghan, Samsoor. But you knew that 71 people or a big group of people were being packed into a van where they would not be able to breathe.

12:21The judge and the prosecutor said the same thing, that we were aware that no holes had been made, that nothing had been done. It was just that these people had to be picked up. The Afghan didn't care what would happen or how it would happen. Pop quiz. What's in your kids' lunchbox? At Whole Foods Market, they've already done the studying. Over 300 food ingredients are banned from their shelves. No hydronated fats in the peanut butter and no high-fructose corn syrup in the cookies. And for sandwiches, there are no synthetic nitrates or nitrites in any of their deli meat. So you can pack lunchboxes with peace of mind.

12:59Get back to school ready at Whole Foods Market.

13:11Vensislav Todorov is serving his sentence in the same Bulgarian prison. He and Metody are both Bulgarian citizens and were transferred from Hungary last year. Compared to Metody, Wenceslav was a beginner and a reluctant one. This was only his third smuggling trip. He did it to pay off a debt, he says. With his broad chin, deep brown eyes, anxious gestures, he comes across as someone caught up in someone else's scheme. He was what's known as the cleaner, driving a support vehicle to keep an eye out for police.

13:51We were on the motorway. Metodi called me and told me to buy diesel for the truck. I went and bought it. All I could get was three five-litre cans. I filled them with diesel, put them in the boot and got back on the road. The truck itself was being driven by a man called Ivailo Stoyanov. Not long after he'd set out, the people in the back started shouting and banging on the sides. Not knowing what to do, he pulled over at a motorway service station. Venceslav stopped close by. He told me that Ivailo, the man driving the truck, was in a real state.

14:31It looks like he got scared. Maybe because the people in the back were shouting and banging. I could hear them. I said to him, what's going on? And he says, I don't know. I said, call Metodi so he could talk to the boss, the Afghan guy, you know, and get in touch with the migrants, find out what the problem was. Then I called Metodi and I said, tell the Afghan guy that the people are fighting, they're killing each other in the truck, they're going nuts. So Metodi rang Samsur, the Afghan boss.

15:01Samsur told me that on every run he had someone in the back of the truck who kept in contact with him. That evening he lied, saying that the person had called and reported that there was no problem. And so we weren't worried because we thought the banging and knocking was normal. I've done this job so many times. They do, they do fight each other. They ask for water because they're Afghans, Iranians, Kurds, and they fight amongst each other. There's no evidence that Samsor did actually call someone in the back of the truck. and there's no evidence that he reassured Metodi that everything was okay.

15:41Metodi says he wasn't on the road that morning, that he was in a hotel with his girlfriend. He was in touch with the rest of the gang only by phone. But he insists he told Samsor that they needed to stop the truck. I told the driver repeatedly to stop the truck, to open the doors and see what the problem was. but fortunately, you know, no one stopped. From what we now know, it seems that the gang had indeed planned to stop to give water to the people in the back. But Samsor, the boss, got cold feet because of all the banging and shouting. He didn't want to attract attention. So he ordered the driver to keep going, whatever happened.

16:25And he said, if they die, dump their bodies in the forest. We know this because of the phone taps. The Hungarian police had been listening in to Metodi and Samsor for nearly two weeks, and they'd recorded their conversations. Which raises the question why they didn't step in earlier, why they didn't prevent this tragedy.

16:54It takes about four hours to drive on the motorway from the Hungary-Serbia border to the Hungary-Austria border. Just before they crossed, the truck stopped again to refuel. For Wenceslav, this time, something was different. I was there for about, I don't know, maybe 15 or 20 seconds, standing there on the side of the road. There was no shouting or screaming or anything. No arguing or fighting. I didn't hear anything. The truck and Wenceslav in the support vehicle crossed the border into Austria soon after nine in the morning. Then, it seems, the driver of the truck panicked and called Wenceslav.

17:48He said, come back. Come back and pick me up, because the police are coming. So the two of them abandoned the truck at the side of the motorway and drove off in Wenceslav's car. The following day, back in Hungary, they caught up with Metodi. And he told us that the people, 20 of them, he said at first, 20 of the people who were in the truck had died. And I almost fainted with shock. I said, what's going on? What is this? Who said it? What are you even talking about? And I turned to the driver and I said, is this true? And he said, I don't know. Shrugged his shoulders saying, I don't know anything about that.

18:37You see, this had apparently been on TV or on the radio. In fact, as we now know, there were 71 people inside that truck. It would stand at the side of the motorway for more than 24 hours before the police arrived to investigate. Back in Iraq, Hazem knew nothing about a white truck beside the motorway in Austria. Ten days passed before he got the terrible news.

19:11The first one who called him and let him know that his family members are in those trucks.

19:22It was his brother. He has a brother in Germany. He lives in Germany. He double-checked the hospitals in Austria and checked the passport and the DNA. So then the brother called Hazem and told him that, yeah, we lost our family members and lost drugs.

19:42The bodies were brought back on the 7th of October that year. That's a date that's fixed in Hazem's mind. He shows me his phone. It's full of pictures of his children and videos he's made. There's one of the funeral, three coffins draped in green. In Vratza prison in Bulgaria, Metodi feels that he doesn't deserve his life sentence. He says the court treated him unfairly. Firstly, because he was not at the scene of the crime. Secondly, because the police knew very well what was happening in the border zone, he says, because he was paying them. The police were taking€100 per person. How was the money paid?

20:29Was it in a petrol station, in the forest? Was it a policeman, a particular policeman you always met? Either at the Shell on the road in Seged or on the road towards Budapest. The first petrol station on the motorway, it is number 150, the mole station. And did you have a phone number for the policeman? I can't say that. Why can't you tell me? We didn't give names in Hungary either. We don't say this. The Hungarian police, it seems, have a number of questions to answer.

21:10The town of Tatabanya is a short train ride to the west of Budapest. The white truck with its awful cargo must have passed it on the motorway. I'm here to meet Lieutenant Colonel Zoltán Boros. In August 2015, he was head of the anti-trafficking unit of the Hungarian police. What happened in the white truck is known by many here as the Pándorff case, after the place it was found in Austria. Do you see Pándorff as a success or a failure for the Hungarian and international police?

21:49Thanks to the international police cooperation on this case, we were able to wrap it up within a year. That allowed us to achieve what we planned from the start, to get those responsible for the death of 71 people behind bars for the rest of their lives. In that sense, this investigation was a success, both internationally and domestically. The police had been on to the gang for quite a while. Metodi believes he was followed for months, and the police had been tapping two of the gang's phones for almost two weeks. So why didn't they intervene? Sultan Boros anticipates my next question. There's a sense that he's been asked the same thing many times.

22:33I know what you want to ask next. We could not have prevented the death of these 71 people. There were at least 12 criminal organizations working on the Hungarian border with Serbia during this period. So we also had to figure out who belongs to which criminal organization in the first place. So the situation was very complicated. It was also very difficult to translate these conversations. A parliamentary committee investigated whether we had a responsibility in this, and it was established that we didn't. The public prosecutor's office also reached the same conclusion. that we did not commit any emissions.

23:11I can say with a clear conscience that we could not have prevented this tragedy of 71 dead. I'm sure of that. Sultan Boros also rejects Metodi's allegations that the smugglers were paying the police off. I had all the statements checked at the time. They could never say who they paid, where or when it happened. All of these allegations were investigated, and I know of no case when it was proven that somebody was paid off. Metodi, like Samsor, the Afghan boss, and Ivailo Stoyanov, the driver of the van, were given whole-life sentences by the court in Hungary. In Hungary, for the most serious crimes, those convicted are able to appeal for clemency only when they've served 40 years.

24:01This, however, contravenes a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that gives a maximum recommended time frame of 25 years. Metodi has already spent tens of thousands of euros on lawyers, challenging his sentence.

24:21To this day, I don't feel guilty. Perhaps on paper, I am a killer as an accomplice or a collaborator, but I didn't kill anyone. There is no blood on my hands. I didn't pick up a machine gun. I didn't kill anyone. I'm not a terrorist. This was your job, Metodi, not just this truck, but, you know, for months, for years. Ten years on, ten years of prison on looking back. How do you feel about the fact that your job was to take money exploiting vulnerable people?

25:03Bad. Bad. Everyone makes mistakes, right? I've made mistakes too. Everyone makes mistakes in this life. No one is without fault. I regret what I've done. After all, I also have children. I also have a family. I'm not a monster. To kill these people deliberately, I didn't kill anyone. And what about Venceslav, the driver of the support vehicle? If you had an opportunity to speak to one of the relatives of the dead, what would you say? Whatever I say to the people after what happened can't change anything. It really is a great tragedy, but no matter how much I regret it, I can't undo what happened.