A Pakistani man suspected of having killed around 70 people in his homeland has been arrested in Hungary among a large group of migrants trying to break into Europe.
Police in the Central European nation arrested the 35-year-old alleged hitman, who is wanted by Interpol, on Tuesday when officers stopped a crowd of illegal immigrants near the border with Serbia, Reuters reports.
Austrian authorities said in a statement that the arrest was made after detectives from the nation’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BK) received a tip-off that the man was heading for Austria, and informed colleagues in Hungary.
Identified only by the initials A.Z., the suspect is a hitman known as the “Pakistani butcher” who, according to Austrian police, is accused of committing “around 70 contract killings” in his homeland.
One of the South Asian nation’s most wanted criminals, according to local media the man had turned his hand to people smuggling since the beginning of Europe’s “migrant crisis”.
“This case once again shows the importance of international cooperation in combating crime. I can only congratulate the Austrian investigators on this success,” said Austria’s Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka.
In the next few days, authorities in Austria will be deciding on whether or not to deport the suspect to Pakistan, OE24 reported.
European Union (EU) human rights legislation barring member states from deporting migrants to countries where they may face the death penalty has resulted in a trend in which an increasing number of illegal immigrants from third world nations with capital punishment confessing to murder in Europe, whether guilty or not.
Scrutinised and condemned by Brussels for his hardline stance on mass migration, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned in 2015 that illegal immigrants flooding into Europe would turn the continent into a “battleground”.
“We will protect our borders [and] the Hungarian people from criminals, terrorists and illegal immigrants,” he promised.
Hungary’s border protection measures — which effectively cut illegal migration by 99 per cent — were attacked last month by the United Nations (UN), which blasted the Central European nation’s border walls for looking insufficiently welcoming.