Europe’s migrant crisis: the truck that shocked the world
Seventy-one migrants suffocated in a truck in 2015. It was abandoned on a motorway in Austria. Could this tragedy have been prevented? We ask the smugglers and the police.
In the summer of 2015, tens of thousands of people left their homes in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq in the hope of finding a safe haven in Europe. The journeys they took were often hazardous and not everyone reached their destination. In one of the most notorious cases, 71 migrants were found dead in the back of a refrigerated truck on a motorway in Austria. They had all suffocated. Could this tragedy have been prevented? For Crossing Continents, Nick Thorpe speaks to two of the people smugglers who are now serving life sentences in a Bulgarian prison. He visits a man in northern Iraq who lost his younger brother and two children aboard the truck and asks the police in Hungary if they could have acted sooner.
Presenter: Nick Thorpe
Producer: Tim Mansel
Local Producer: Yana Pelovska
Sound mixer: Hal Haines
Series editor: Penny Murphy
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- Tue 19 Aug 2025 21:00ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Radio 4
- Mon 25 Aug 2025 00:15ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Radio 4
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Crossing Continents
Stories from around the world and the people at the heart of them.