Budapest court sentences two people smugglers to 10 years imprisonment

In an appealable ruling handed out on Wednesday, a court in Budapest has sentenced two people smugglers to 10 years imprisonment each for transporting dozens of illegal migrants in a truck without ventilation. The defendants, residents of Belgium, will also be banned from Hungary for 10 years, once they have served their prison terms. According to a statement from the court, the defendants had attempted to carry 38 Turkish, Indian, and Syrian nationals from the Hungary-Serbia border to Austria in April last year. Upon stopping and inspecting the truck on motorway M5 in central Hungary, police provided first aid to one of the passengers they found unconscious and arranged for the person’s hospitalisation. “If the door of the truck had not been opened for another half an hour, the passenger would have died,” the court said, adding that the other 38 passengers had also been in jeopardy of asphyxiation.