A Hungarian court sentenced four members of a people-smuggling gang to 25 years in prison on Thursday for letting 71 men, women and children suffocate inside a truck in 2015 and dumping the truck with corpses at the side of an Austrian motorway.

Four men have been charged with the killings of the victims, which came at the height of Europe's migrant crisis in 2015. All four were found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison in a first-degree court ruling in the town of Kecskemet.

The bodies of the 59 men, eight women and four children, from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, were found inside the abandoned truck in Austria on August 26, 2015.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.