Europe’s migrant crisis: the truck that shocked the world

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 Assignment, 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.

This episode of The Documentary comes to you from Assignment, investigations and journeys into the heart of global events.

Transcript

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0:00.0	There are three graves, simple made from grey marble, on a raised platform on the edge of the graveyard.
0:12.1	And there's a tin roof over them to protect them from the elements and give some shade.
0:19.2	And above the graves are a photograph of two young men and a some shade. And above the graves,
0:24.9	a photograph of two young men and a young woman.
0:35.0	Hazam is saying that he visited the graveyard twice a week.
0:39.4	The family will come here and sit here and they clean the graves.
0:46.9	They bring sometimes food and do stuff for them to eat and stay here with the other family members.
0:53.8	Hazem Kali and his family have been conducting this sad ritual for nearly 10 years now, ever since the summer of 2015,
0:57.2	when an unprecedented number of migrants set out on a journey to seek safety in Europe.
1:03.9	They came from the Middle East and beyond. Two of Hazem's children were part of that exodus.
1:10.4	So was his younger brother.
1:12.4	But there was to be no happy ending for them.
1:16.6	All three died on the road.
1:19.8	And in the most horrific of circumstances.
1:23.4	This is the documentary from the BBC World Service.
1:27.4	I'm Nick Thorpe and in this edition of assignment, I'll be asking how their deaths could have been prevented.
1:37.6	In Hazam's home in the town of Hanke, his wife Gordier serves tea. We're in northern Iraq, not far from
1:47.6	the border with Turkey. So, Hazam is saying that Alene, Alin, they were in school.
1:58.8	Our translator is called Rojan.
2:03.8	And his brother was working in another city which is Airbill.
2:05.6	He was working in a hotel.
2:08.8	I think you have some photographs of them on your telephone.
	...

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