(Sofia) Six Bulgarians have been indicted after the discovery on Friday of eighteen migrants who died of asphyxiation in a truck in Bulgaria, the deadliest immigration drama to have occurred in the country, the prosecution announced on Saturday.
The head of the network is among these six indicted, said Hristo Krastev, spokesperson for the prosecution, to the press, after the announcement a little earlier of the arrest of seven people.
Two of the seven people arrested are not being prosecuted. And one of the indicted is still at large.
The seven indicted risk up to 15 years in prison, the prosecution said.
The leader of the smugglers had already been sentenced to a five-month suspended prison sentence for human trafficking.
The 18 migrants were found dead in an abandoned truck in a village near Sofia, the capital of this Balkan country faced in recent months with an unprecedented influx of candidates for exile since the migration crisis of 2015.
According to the first elements of the investigation, the truck was illegally transporting 52 people hidden under wooden planks, a priori Afghan migrants from Turkey.
The driver allegedly heard thuds coming from his load, but did not stop immediately. He had fled after seeing the dead, according to Deputy Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov.
“The people transported were squeezed like in a sardine tin… They died slowly, in pain, for 30 to 60 minutes,” said Mr. Sarafov, lamenting “an extraordinary human tragedy”.
Each had paid around 7,000 euros to the traffickers for this passage, according to Mr. Sarafov, denouncing “the greed of the smugglers”, who “had until then transported between 25 and 35 people per trip, at least twice a month”.
Once at the scene, investigators discovered a grisly scene with bodies strewn on the grass around the truck.
Some 34 migrants were rescued and taken to hospital on Friday.
Some of them are being treated for carbon monoxide poisoning after inhaling exhaust fumes, according to Spas Spaskov, an emergency doctor at Pirogov Hospital in Sofia.
“They were getting very limited oxygen and they had no water, which is why they are very dehydrated. They haven’t eaten for several days,” he told private television channel Nova.
As a gateway to the European Union (EU), Bulgaria saw an upsurge in illegal immigration on its territory last year, despite the presence of a 234 kilometer barbed wire fence along the border with Turkey.