Balkan authorities investigate suicide bomber in Paris attacks

(Vatican Radio) Authorities in several Balkan countries are investigating the travels of a man whose Syrian passport was found next to a dead suicide bomber at France's national stadium late Friday, though some reports have suggested the document may have been fake. 

The developments prompted a human rights campaigner to urge Europe not to close borders to hundreds of thousands of refugees using the Balkans route to reach Western Europe including many people from war-torn Syria.

Listen to the report by Stefan Bos:

Serbian police said the owner of a Syrian passport found near a suicide bomber in Paris entered the country on October 7 from Macedonia - part of a wave of asylum-seekers crossing the Balkans toward Western Europe. Local authorities only identified the man as A.A. 

Police in neighboring Croatia confirmed that he was checked at a refugee center there on October 8. 

Yet, spokeswoman Helena Biocic said Sunday the man was "not flagged as suspicious" and continued his journey towards Hungary and Austria.

SCHENGEN ZONE

Both countries are part of the European Union’s passport- free Schengen Zone, allowing easy access to other countries such as France.    

His long journey in Europe began in Greece where officials said the passport's owner entered the nation on October 3 through Leros one of the Greek islands that tens of thousands of refugees have been using as a gateway into the 28-nation European Union.

News that at least one of the suicide bombers found in Paris may have crossed the Balkans route was expected to boost arguments of Hungary’s right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and some other leaders to close Europe’s borders to migrants fleeing war and poverty. 

Hungary, where a national day of mourning for the more than 100 victims of the French attacks was held Sunday, has been building razor wire fences along its borders with Croatia and Serbia to halt the influx of refugees. And since last week...

ARMY INVOLVED

Army trucks have arrived in Slovenia’s border areas. Soldiers are building a razor wire fence along the entire border with Croatia from where some 200,000 refugees crossed into Slovenia since mid October.
           
Yet a senior human rights campaigner appealed to Europe not to "shut the door" on the hundreds of thousands migrants and refugees. 

Peter Bouckaert, emergency director of the Human Rights Watch group also stressed that "the passport appears to have been fake" amid a widespread trade in travel documents. . 

With Europe stepping up security, rights activists fear that thousands of innocent refugees will face uncertainty as winter sets in.