KECSKEMT: The four main suspects involved in the gruesome deaths of 71 migr­ants in a truck on an Austrian highway in 2015 were jailed for 25 years on Thursday, in a case that sparked international revulsion.

The ruling followed a year-long trial in Hungary, which took over the proceedings from Vienna after it emerged that the migrants had suffocated on Hungarian soil.

Prosecutors, who had asked for life terms without parole, immediately appea­led the sentence after the ruling, arguing that it was too lenient. Ten other suspects were also found guilty over the deaths and handed prison sentences of up to 12 years by the court in the southern town of Kecskemet. Three were tried in absentia.

The men were allegedly members of a trafficking ga­ng based in Budapest, whi­ch smuggled more than 1,200 people into western Europe at the height of the continent’s 2015 migrant crisis.

The bodies of the 59 men, eight women and four children — including a baby girl — were already in an advanced state of decomposition when they were discovered in an abandoned poultry refrigerator lorry on August 27, 2017.

Investigations showed they had been dead for two days, suffocating shortly after being picked up in Hungary, then a key transit country on the Balkan migrant trail.

The ringleader, a young Afghan, and the other mostly Bulgarian suspects denied knowing that the migrants were dying in the back.

But evidence presented to the court indicated they had been aware of what was happening.

“The four main accused knew that inaction on their part could lead to the deaths of the victims,” Judge Janos Jadi said in Thursday’s ruling.

“It’s clear that the defendants were well aware that these vehicles were not suited for human passengers, this is torture under the law even if the passengers were not beaten by the smugglers.” The victims — all from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan — had been part of hundreds of thousands of desperate people fleeing war and misery in the Middle East and elsewhere in 2015, triggering Europe’s worst migrant crisis since World War II.

Sentencing the four for homicide and people smuggling, Jadi said Afghan Lahoo Samsooryamal - described by prosecutors as the ringleader — had ordered the driver not to open the doors of the Volvo freezer truck as it headed from the Serbian-Hungarian border towards Germany.

The other three, Bulgarians Metodi Georgiev, Vencislav Todorov and Ivaylo Stoyanov, followed in cars and were in contact by phone during the journey.

The temperature rose quickly soon after their departure and the air began to run out, Jadi said, but the driver could have stopped on the motorway to let air in, “anytime and anywhere”.

Published in Dawn, June 15th, 2018