August 27, 2020 – The inebriated people trafficker misheard or misunderstood and took his passengers to Dobrinj, on island Krk, instead of Brinje in Lika
They must have been very trusting of the driver or just very bad at geography. Migrants sitting in the back of a people smuggler’s van on Tuesday ended up spending twice as long in the baking-hot confinement than they needed to.
It’s only around 70 kilometres from the Bosnian border to Brinje, in Lika, their intended destination. You can do the journey in around an hour and twenty minutes. But, their inebriated driver misheard or misunderstood where they wanted to go. He instead took them to Dobrinj, on Krk island. It’s a three-hour drive and almost 200 kilometres from the border to there.
The sleepy village of Dobrinj is not used to hosting many visitors © Tourist Board Krk island
Not so popular with tourists as other parts of the island, Dobrinj is a sleepy village that relies more on its olives and sheep than on the footfall of visitors. It is not used to hosting strangers, save for the bears who occasionally come in winter to hibernate in the wilds on the outskirts of town.
Villagers were therefore taken aback when a heavily-loaded and struggling van with Zagreb license plates rolled into town at around 7pm. Even more shocking was the state of the driver. Novi list reports that locals he encountered described the man as being visibly intoxicated or “under the influence of heavier opiates.”
But, an even greater surprise lay in store for those peering through their curtains at the curious scene. Once the doors of the windowless van were opened, some 24 out-of-place looking young men emerged.
Inhabitants of the village are reported to have expressed sympathy for the hapless and misguided passengers. Although the cretinous mistake by the driver is certain to have raised a few smiles. Island police were soon called to the scene and took both the driver and his passengers into custody in order to begin investigating exactly what had transpired.
