Austrian officials suspect that 61 Kurdish illegal emigrants who entered Austria through Slovakia attained Slovak visas by bribing embassy officials in Libya, said Marian Masarík, the press department director of the Slovak Foreign Ministry in Bratislava on September 29.
The Austrians allege that a 31-year-old Tunisian and a 37-year-old Libyan paid an undisclosed amount to the Slovak embassy for the visas, then distributed them to the Kurds who travelled by air to Bratislava. The two men then smuggled the Kurds into Austria across the Moravian River in two groups, the first on July 27 and the second on September 10.
The two accused emigrant-smugglers were arrested last week in Bratislava under the jurisdiction of an international warrant issued by an Austrian court.
