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| Europe |
| Dozens of Chechens captured at German-Polish border |
| 2007-12-25 |
| Polish and German border officials overnight Monday captured 59 Chechen would-be immigrants on a train to Germany near the Polish border, Gorzow Wielkopolski border police said. The Chechens had been detected on the Warsaw-Berlin train, it was said. As asylum seekers in Poland they had not been allowed to travel abroad, a spokesman for the border police said. They now face confinement in asylum-seeker homes in Poland. Polish border police marched off 35 Chechens from the train at its last stop at Rzepin station. German police continued the controls on the onward journey across the border to avoid delaying the train. Another 24 Chechens had to leave the train at Frankfurt/Oder, eastern Germany. The operation was controlled by the German-Polish police and customs centre at the Schwedt motorway crossing. The centre had only been opened last Friday by the two countries' interior ministers, German Wolfgang Schaeuble and Polish Grzegorz Shetyna. After the fall of border controls on December 21, when Poland became part of the Schengen zone, Polish border police increased activities in the hinterland. |
| Posted by:lotp |