By Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska

KUZNICA, Poland – Poland’s 5.5-metre tall steel barrier, built on its border with Belarus, was meant to be a European version of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s wall, protecting the European Union’s eastern frontier from illegal migration.

But the wall, stretching about 187 kms (116 miles) and set to be equipped with motion sensors and cameras, may not be enough to halt the steady flow of people trying to cross into Poland in the hope of a better life.

Hungary’s nationalist government built its own border fence after the 2015 migration crisis to stem migration from Serbia. Thousands of migrants still get through, with the help of people smugglers.

Sitting in the attic of a so-called “safe house” only a few kms away from the Polish wall in the north, Joel and Lisa, a 30-year-old married couple from Cuba said they had climbed the barrier overnight, arriving from Russia.

“It’s very hard [to cross], but when you set your mind to something in life and you leave people behind who rely on you and your sacrifice, you must do your best,” says Lisa, whose three children stayed behind in Cuba. She declined to give her family name.

They moved to Russia on a student visa in April 2021 as they struggled to feed their family back home. They found a job in a tailor shop in the city of Ivanova but as the political situation in Russia got tense because of the war in Ukraine, they decided to take on the long journey to Spain via Belarus and Poland, to join their family members.

The couple wandered in the Polish forests for three days, before a local woman helped them find a place where they could rest for a few days. Lisa’s feet are still swollen from all the walking.

According to Grupa Granica, a coalition of non-governmental organisations and local activists who have been helping people hiding in Poland’s woodlands, the wall has not stopped people from attempting to enter Poland.

“It all depends on the weather. Now, when it’s hot, we receive a lot of calls,” says Paulina Bownik, a doctor from Bielsk Podlaski, who, since last August, has provided medical help to over 300 people. “We have people in the woods all the time.”

PUSHING MIGRANTS BACK

Poland started building its steel border barrier in January after nearly 40,000 people, mostly from the Middle East and Afghanistan, tried to cross from Belarus between August and January.

The Polish government also imposed an emergency zone near the border that neither doctors nor NGOs could enter and began a campaign of pushing migrants back to Belarus. Critics say this sparked a humanitarian catastrophe, but Poland insists the measures were necessary in response to what it called Belarus’ provocations.

It completed the wall last month but according to local activists, people still go over, under or through it with the help of no or only basic tools.

Between June 16 and 22, Grupa Granica received 132 calls for help from migrants wandering the woodlands.

What has changed, however, is that most migrants use Russia to get to Europe, unlike last year when the majority came from the Middle East via Belarus, the Polish border guard said.

“Virtually all people who are now trying to cross the border illegally come from Russia, their journey was through Moscow. These are people who often got a student visa, although they had no intention of studying in Moscow,” said Anna Michalska, a spokeswoman for the Polish border guard. She said there were a lot of Sub-Saharan African nationals this year.

This year, the border guard recorded 5,859 attempts to illegally enter Poland from Belarus, compared with 39,269 between August and December 2021.

Some migrants end up in guarded or open migrant centres, while those who do not want to apply for international protection in Poland, are “informed about the obligation to leave the territory of Poland and returned to the border line”, the border guard told Reuters in an emailed reply.

($1 = 4.5255 zlotys)

(Reporting by Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska; Editing by Krisztina Than and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

By Stine Jacobsen and Nikolaj Skydsgaard

COPENHAGEN – Three people were killed and several more were wounded in a shooting at a shopping centre in Copenhagen on Sunday, Danish police said, adding they had arrested a 22-year-old Danish man and charged him with manslaughter.

The attack rocked Denmark at the end of an otherwise joyful week, just after it hosted the first three stages of the Tour de France cycle race. The event had sent hundreds of thousands of cheering Danes into the streets across the country.

“Denmark was hit by a cruel attack on Sunday night. Several were killed. Even more wounded. Innocent families shopping or eating out. Children, adolescents and adults,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a statement late on Sunday.

“Our beautiful and usually so safe capital was changed in a split second,” she said. “I want to encourage the Danes to stand together and support each other in this difficult time.”

Copenhagen police said armed officers were sent to Field’s mall in the capital late on Sunday afternoon after reports of a shooting, and had told people inside to stay put and await assistance. Local media footage showed groups of terrified shoppers running from the mall.

The suspect was apprehended at 5:48 p.m. local time (1548 GMT), carrying a rifle and ammunition. Police launched a massive search operation throughout the local Zealand region early Sunday evening in search of any accomplices.

“We are going to have a large investigation and a massive operational presence in Copenhagen until we can say with certainty: He was alone,” Thomassen said.

The shooter had killed a man in his forties and two “young people”, a man and a woman, Thomassen said. Several more were wounded, and among those were three in critical condition.

The investigation so far did not point towards a racist motive or otherwise, but this could change, he said.

Copenhagen police will hold a press briefing Monday morning at 8:00 a.m. local time.

The capital’s main hospital, Rigshospitalet, had received a “small group of patients” for treatment, a spokesperson said early Sunday evening, and had called in extra doctors and nurses.

Danish tabloid BT published unverified video footage it said was shot by a witness to the attack, Mahdi Al-wazni, showing a man with a large rifle walking through the mall and swinging it around his shoulders.

“He seemed very aggressive and shouted different things,” Al-wazni told BT.

Footage published by tabloid Ekstra Bladet showed one person being carried by rescue workers into an ambulance on a stretcher.

“People first thought it was a thief … Then I suddenly hear shots and threw myself behind the counter inside the store,” an eyewitness, Rikke Levandovski, told broadcaster TV2.

“He is just shooting into the crowd, not up in the ceiling or into the floor,” she added.

The multi-storey shopping mall is located around 5 kilometres (3 miles) south of downtown Copenhagen.

“My friend and I … suddenly we hear shots. I hear about ten shots and then run as fast as we can into a toilet. We squeeze into this tiny toilet where we are around 11 people,” another witness who gave her name as Isabella told public broadcaster DR.

The attack follows a deadly shooting in neighbouring Norway last week, in which two people were killed by a lone shooter in the capital Oslo.

The terrorist threat against Denmark is currently assessed to be “serious”, with the biggest threat coming from “militant Islamism”, according to the latest report from the Danish Security and Intelligence Service.

The threat to Denmark from right-wing extremists is considered at a “general” level, which means there is capability and/or intent and possibly planning.

Denmark last saw a militant attack in 2015, when two people were killed and six police officers wounded when a lone gunman shot and killed a man outside a culture centre hosting a debate on freedom of speech, and later killed a person outside a Jewish synagogue in central Copenhagen.

That gunman was killed in a shoot-out with police.

A concert due to be held by singer Harry Styles in Copenhagen on Sunday night not far from the shopping centre was cancelled, police said.

“Our thoughts and deepest sympathy are with the victims, their relatives and all those affected by the tragedy,” Denmark’s Queen Margrethe and the Crown Prince couple said in a statement.

An event in Southern Denmark to commemorate the end of the Tour de France stages, hosted by the Crown Prince and with Frederiksen in attendance, was also cancelled.

The suspect will face preliminary questioning in front of a judge early on Monday.

(Reporting by Stine Jacobsen and Nikolaj Skydsgaard; Editing by Kevin Liffey, Jan Harvey, Alexandra Hudson, Catherine Evans, Daniel Wallis and Diane Craft)

By Emma Farge and Angus McDowall

GENEVA -A U.N.-appointed mission to Libya said on Monday there are “probable mass graves” yet to be investigated, possibly as many as 100, in a town where hundreds of bodies have already been found, and it urged Tripoli to keep searching.

The report to be submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council this week details how a militia run by seven brothers executed and imprisoned hundreds of people between 2016-2020, sometimes keeping them in tiny oven-like structures called “the boxes” which were set alight during interrogations. [nL8N2R83MH]

The evidence of kidnappings, murder and torture in Tarhouna, uncovered by the independent Fact-Finding Mission, represents one of the most egregious examples of rights abuses in the turbulent period since Muammar Gaddafi’s ousting in 2011.

Among the victims were the disabled as well as women and children, the 51-page report said.

Based on the testimonies of residents and two site visits, the mission found “reasonable grounds” that the Kaniyat militia committed crimes against humanity. It identified four commanders who participated directly in them.

Already, Libyan authorities have recovered 247 bodies in mass and individual grave sites in the Tarhouna area in Western Libya. Many were still handcuffed and blindfolded.

The mission used satellite imagery showing signs of soil disturbances among other evidence to identify three new likely sites. But there could be many more, it said, citing an existing grave known as ‘The Landfill’ where just a tiny fraction of the site has been investigated.

“According to insider knowledge, there might still be up to 100 as of yet undiscovered mass graves,” the report said.

It is not immediately clear how the findings will reflect on Libyan authorities. Libya’s diplomatic mission in Geneva did not respond for a request for comment.

At one stage, the Kaniyat was aligned with the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord but later with the eastern Libyan National Army led by commander Khalifa Haftar that tried, unsuccessfully, to overthrow the National Accord administration. The militia no longer holds authority in Tarhouna.

The surviving leaders of the Kaniyat are mostly believed to have fled to areas of eastern Libya under Haftar’s control.

In its conclusions, the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) calls on Libyan authorities to continue searching for the graves. It also urges them to establish a special tribunal to prosecute international crimes.

Tracy Robinson, one of the three heads in charge of the 18-person team, said it did not have the resources or authority to investigate the Tarhouna graves alone. “It’s the state’s duty to act,” she told journalists in Geneva.

The report refers to difficulties with cooperation with Libyan authorities in the past. Diplomats and U.N. sources also told Reuters that Libya had previously expressed reservations about continuing the mission, which expires this month.

A resolution is currently before the Geneva-based council to keep investigations going for another nine months, which is less than some had hoped for.

A decision is expected this week and, if successful, FFM members said they intend to submit further evidence, a final report and a confidential list of individual suspects to the council next year.

(Writing by Emma Farge, Editing by William Maclean and Andrew Heavens)