British journalist who claimed to have reached Paris from Turkey undetected had passport checked twice, say Croatian police.
A journalist working for British tabloid The Sun reported several days ago that he managed to travel from Turkey to Paris in just six days without showing his passport even once. The path that he had allegedly taken was similar to the route which was used by some of the people responsible for recent terrorist attacks in Paris and is used by many of the refugees and migrants on the so-called Balkan Route, reports Index.hr on December 6, 2015.
In the part of his story concerning Croatia, Emile Ghessen wrote that, after his train was stopped at the border with Croatia, he hid in a toilet in the train. He left the door unlocked so that it would appear that it was not occupied. “The police never checked the toilet. Four hours later I was in Zagreb and spent a night in a hostel”, Ghessen wrote in his article. Afterwards, he changed several trains and finally arrived in Paris.
However, Croatian Interior Ministry claims that his story is made up. “Police Directorate denies part of the article published on the website of the British newspaper The Sun (ARTICLE UPDATE – The Sun appears now to have taken the original article offline), which claims that a journalist managed to pass through Croatia without being checked by the Croatian border police. In fact, Croatian border police registered Emile Pierre Ghessen on 23 November at 2.10 pm at the Tovarnik railway border crossing where he entered the Republic of Croatia, and on 24 November at 5.20 pm at the Zagreb Airport border crossing, where he exited the Republic of Croatia.” As evidence, the Ministry published a scan of his passport made during border checks.
“I am glad when the police quickly finds liars like these, so-called professional journalists, and catch them lying about hiding in a toilet where they belong, together with the newspapers which employ them”, Croatian Interior Minister Ranko Ostojić wrote on Facebook.
From midnight to 9 am on Sunday, 2,089 migrants entered Croatia and they were temporarily accommodated at the refugee reception centre in Slavonski Brod. From the beginning of the migration crisis, 471,552 migrants and refugees have passed through Croatia.
