A regional court in the eastern German city of Görlitz has sentenced two smugglers from the Czech Republic. The trial examined their involvement in the transportation of 49 migrants crammed into a van last year. The sentences were handed out on Thursday (February 15).

The convicted organizer of the smuggling, who was a passenger in the vehicle, received a prison sentence of two and a half years, according to news agency AFP citing a court spokesman. The driver of the van was sentenced to two years' imprisonment on probation; moreover, he will not be allowed to drive for one year.

According to the indictment, there was enough evidence to substantiate that the smugglers brought 49 people, 20 of them children, from Hungary to Germany via Slovakia and the Czech Republic last year in September.

The two men were stopped in their vehicle by Germany's federal police on a federal highway near the city of Zittau on September 13. They were arrested when the migrants were discovered, and subsequently taken in to custody.

Görlitz and Zittau, both located near the German-Czech-Polish border triangle, are medium-sized cities in the state of Saxony.

Virtually no air supply

The court said the two men smuggled the migrants under life-threatening and degrading treatment.

Citing federal police, regional public broadcaster MDR reported last year that the situation inside the van was "dramatic", with the group of migrants being forced to stand crammed in the tighly shut loading area for twelve hours with almost no air supply and in high temperatures.

According to tabloid Bild, the 49 dehydrated people had only seven square meters of room inside the van, meaning that on average seven of them were sharing a single square meter.

The public prosecutor's office accused the smugglers of wilfully allowing for the possibility that the people being smuggled could be seriously injured, or even die, due to their braking maneuvers or any accidents they had on the journey.

With the verdict, the court fell short of the prosecution's demand, which had called for prison sentences of four and four and a half years. The defense also demanded harsher sentences than those imposed by the court.

Series of failed smuggling attempts

This week's prison sentences highlight the dangers migrants might face in the attempt to reach European countries -- often with the help of smugglers, who are frequently arrested both inside and outside the EU for trying to bring migrants into western Europe.

Over the past months and years, a number of detected smuggling attempts at the German-Polish and German-Czech borders made headlines:

• Last November, over 200 police officers operated in a smuggling crackdown in eastern Germany. The smugglers were suspected of transporting migrants through the Balkans to Germany in the back of vans and cars in what police described as inhumane conditions.
• In October 2023, German police charged the driver of a van which crashed in Germany, killing seven migrants. Prosecutors filed charges against the suspect for migrant smuggling and causing death through dangerous driving.
• Last September, German police arrested a 15-year-old Syrian who was behind the steering wheel of a van with 27 smuggled people on board.
• In the whole month of September, German police intercepted 320 migrants trying to cross the border from Poland.
• In July 2023, German police stopped at least three vehicles over the course of a few days after the drivers were found attempting to smuggle migrants across the Polish border to Germany.
• In November 2021, German police stopped 23 migrants near the Polish-German border and detained two suspected people smugglers.

with AFP