Hungarian police arrest 3 people for transporting refugees

Hungarian police arrest two British, one Indian man trying to transport dozens of refugees illegally to Austria

Refugees pass under a highway security fence as they try to find a new way to enter Hungary after Hungarian police sealed the border with Serbia near the village of Horgos, Serbia, September 14, 2015.
TRT World and Agencies

Refugees pass under a highway security fence as they try to find a new way to enter Hungary after Hungarian police sealed the border with Serbia near the village of Horgos, Serbia, September 14, 2015.

Two Britons and an Indian were arrested in Hungary on Saturday night accused of trying to transport more than a dozen refugees illegally to Austria, Hungarian police said.

Until it sealed its southern border last autumn, Hungary was the main gateway to northern Europe, predominantly Germany, for hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing poverty and violence in the Middle East and Africa.

The flow slowed to a trickle as the Hungarian border fence forced refugees south to Croatia and Slovenia, which early this year effectively sealed their frontiers too.

But refugees have continued to cross the fence in small numbers, and police still regularly detain people who try to transport refugees to the West, according to police reports.

The two Britons, a 26-year-old man identified as A. S. and 31-year-old S. M. S. were carrying 11 Syrian and Afghani citizens when stopped in their Nissan along the motorway that leads to the border, police said.

In a separate arrest, 34 year-old Indian national S. M. was driving an unspecified number of Somalis and Pakistanis toward Austria when his car was pulled over.

No further details were immediately available.

Hungary is part of the European Union's Schengen zone in which passport controls have been abolished, but police carry out regular identity checks on the motorway to the Austrian border.

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