Five foreigners, including two Afghans and three Pakistanis, entered the Czech Republic illegally, and three of them have tested positive for coronavirus.
Without travel documents, hidden in a Romanian truck that brought goods from Turkey to the Czech Republic, they were discovered by customs officers, who also called the police for reinforcement.
“The goods were transported from the southwest of Turkey via Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia to the Czech Republic and were intended for a domestic consignee based in Nové Město nad Metují,” said customs spokeswoman Jitka Fajstavrová, adding that the cargo space of the truck was secured with a thin cable and customs seal.
“But customs officers found that the cable on the side of the vehicle was broken. In addition to the goods listed in the submitted transit customs declaration, there were five persons of foreign nationality in the cargo area of the semi-trailer,” said Fajstavrová.
Immediately after their arrest, all five men received a face mask from the police and were tested for coronavirus. Tests were positive in three cases.
As the police protected themselves from the very beginning and treated the refugees cautiously, they did not have to be quarantined, but the vehicles, the entire service station, including the cells, had to be disinfected, added police spokeswoman Iva Kormošová.
After the police took the fingerprints of the foreigners, it turned out that they had already applied for asylum in Romania but told police they wanted to move further to Western Europe.
“The driver could continue on his way because it was not confirmed that he had anything to do with the smuggling. A transfer procedure is being conducted with two foreigners to Romania. The other three, as they are not yet of legal age, were placed in a diagnostic facility based on a preliminary court decision,“ Kormošová concluded.
Recently, the number of such cases has been rising. Last month, for example, customs officers detained two illegal migrants enjoying a coffee break by the motorway in Southern Moravia.
Title image: The truck in which the migrants were found. (Board of Customs, Czech Republic)
