In a grimy Sarajevo cafe a human smuggler is meeting his newest customers.
"Let's make a deal for tonight. We can bring you to the northern border like we said," a Bosnian man says in Turkish to two other men.
After a short telephone call, one of the Turkish men nods his head.
"Everything is okay," he says. "You can have the money tonight. There will be five of us . . ."
". . . At 2,000 deutschmarks a head," says the Bosnian.
The three men stand up and leave the cafe, looking suspiciously at the journalist in the corner.
Hours after that deal was done last March, the five Turkish men were smuggled across the border into Croatia and on into Europe.
The Kalendergil family from Turkey took a similar route through Bosnia-Herzegovina, but their journey ended in tragedy in Wexford last weekend.
Mr Hasan Kalendergil (42) died in a freight container along with his son, Kalender (16) and his daughter Zelidi (10). His wife, Kadiye (36), survived but is in a critical condition.
The Bosnia route taken by the Kalendergil family is so well-travelled by immigrants and smugglers that authorities refer to the country as the "springboard into Europe". The flow of immigrants through Bosnia reached its peak last year when 31,000 migrants, predominantly Turks and Kurds, arrived at the country's two main airports on the daily flight from Ankara. Some 28,000 of these arrivals, all bearing return tickets to Turkey, are now unaccounted for and are assumed to be in western Europe.
Since the UN increased security checks, however, the numbers arriving at the airports have halved. Only 14,000 people arrived by air from Turkey so far this year, of whom almost 9,000 were never seen again.
UN officials in Sarajevo say smugglers have changed their tactics and are now bringing immigrants into the country overland from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
No one knows how many thousands of immigrants are smuggled into Bosnia by land routes. Until this year only four of the country's 400 border crossings were manned.
The situation has improved this year and a new State Border Service (SBS) now guards 80 per cent of borders. But the service is chronically underfunded and lacks even basic equipment to fight the smugglers.
One of the main land routes into Bosnia is over the River Drina, the natural border with Yugoslavia.
The smuggling routes out of Bosnia are as fluid as the routes in. But most smugglers bring their human cargo to the northern cities of Tuzla and Bihac, over the border into Croatia, and from there into Italy. It was here that the Kalendergils boarded the freight container bound for Brussels.
Officially, the Bosnian government says it is determined to stop smuggling through the country. But UN officials stationed in Sarajevo say members of the government have had or continue to have links to organised crime and give smuggling "the nod".
The government admits there is a problem but says it is restricted to local politicians.
"There is a problem and we are aware we have a problem. At a municipal level there are groups who are making human trafficking possible," said Mr Amer Kadetanovic, spokesman of the Bosnian Foreign Ministry in Sarajevo.
The Bosnian government knows it will have to deal with the smuggling problem: its international credibility and billions of dollars in international aid depend on it.
The Turkish Embassy in Sarajevo insists that the thousands of people who arrive in Bosnia from Turkey each year are "genuine businessmen and tourists" and that Bosnia should be glad for the revenue they generate.
But the only Bosnians who made any money from the Kalendergil family were the smugglers. Based on the going rate of £800 per head, it cost the Kalendergils £3,200 to be smuggled through Bosnia and into Europe.