Syrians migration journey has a taste of hell: migrant

 (Reporting by Faris al-Rifai; Translation by Yusra Ahmed)

“We were packed like sardines in a van, but our good luck saved us from imminent death when a police trap stopped the van",a Palestinian refugee from Yarmouk camp described his adventure in the way between Greece and Serbia.

The story of Mahmoud al-Maghribi, the nickname chosen by young man talked to Zaman al-Wasl, brought back to mind the shocking story of the death of more than 70 refugees suffocated in refrigerated van at the boarders between Austria and Germany.

Macedonian borders were few months ago not as known as they are these days, they were difficult to reach immigrant were forced to walk for days in the forests and rough routes to reach the capital Skopje, according to al-Maghribi.

The young man added that Macedonian police had many times caught them and returned them the start point and all their efforts went in vain, but they were determined to reach to their goal and tried again again. He explained that they were afraid of going with smugglers because of the risk of being caught by police’s trap and sent to the prison of “Gazi Baba" and spent many months before getting charged as witnesses of a smuggler or a driver.

Al-Maghribi continued describing stages of his dangerous journey: "Fate led us to the village of Viksinja in Macedonia, then we continued to Serbia where we were supposed to take a van to drive them to Belgrade. It was January and the last day of the snow storm when we walked for 14 hours in snow.”

According to Mahmoud they were 40 young men walking in nowhere aiming to reach to safe point under their two guides’ direction, who were a Pakistani and an Afghani, who looked as if they were under drug.

When they reach to the van, it was small with no seat inside, but he with other almost 40 one needed to get packed inside it to reach to Belgrade and they paid €400 each, but only minutes after driving the van, they started to suffer from the lack of air, while the drivers and guides demanding them to hold on and be patient.

“However 10 minutes later, a police trap stopped the van, the driver run away and we felt free and breathed fresh air, and we felt lucky for the trap because it saved us of imminent death, either from the lack of air inside the van, or because of its bad floor that started cracking when we got off it as a result of heavy weight, later we were taken to prison where they were given water and allowed to eat their food, their fingerprints and photos were taken” al-Maghribi detailed.

After that 34 of them were transferred to Macedonian boarders, and he with other 5 persons were taken to prison of Verana.