24 Afghan migrants locked up in car, rescued

       A police officer inspecting the van that conveyed the migrants   (C)RobertJaeger

Afghan police were able to save the day in what could have been another case of dead locked up migrants, suffocated in a van. It was reported that the migrants were discovered after a nighttime police who was on a patrol gave a chase on the highways on the outskirts of Vienna.  The police were said to have increased such patrols in the hopes of finding human traffickers who are exploiting the despair of thousands of migrants, many of whom are trying to flee war in the Middle East and plan to seek asylum in Europe, The New York Times reports.
The 24 Afghans were crammed into a space about 6 feet wide, 10 feet long and less than 6 feet high in a white van that traffickers had adapted to lock in their human cargo, Mr. Keiblinger said.
 The traffickers had welded shut a bolt on the back doors as well as the sliding door on the side, and they had put bars on the back windows, he  said. The sole window between the driver’s seat and the back of the van had been blacked out and firmly closed, he said.
“In effect, it was a jail cell,” said Mr. Keiblinger, who described photographs showing the Afghans standing and kneeling in the van in the early hours of Tuesday. “They had no air, it was basically a situation of life or death.”
The Afghan migrants were taken to a police station for questioning, Mr. Keiblinger said, and they are believed to have boarded the vehicle in Hungary, most likely close to the border with Austria, about an hour’s drive from Vienna.
Had they remained in the van much longer, he said, they would have died.
None of the Afghans wanted to apply for asylum in Austria, Mr. Keiblinger said. They indicated that they preferred to travel to Germany, he added, and they were released.