When Gaylan Delir Ismael heard that other Iraqis were making their way to Europe via an easily obtained tourist visa from the country of Belarus, the 25-year-old from the Kurdistan region jumped at the chance. He packed a bag last month in the hope of reaching Germany for a new life and treatment for his chronic illnesses.

He never made it.

Gaylan’s body, in a black coffin wrapped in plastic, was returned to Irbil’s airport in northern Iraq on Sunday after he died in a dark and soggy forest near the Belarus-Poland border.

He is one of at least 11 people known to have died in the border crisis that European Union officials blame on the authoritarian regime of Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, accusing him of using the migrants as pawns to retaliate for Western sanctions. Belarus denies this, blaming Europe for denying them safe passage.

Thousands of people, most of them from the Middle East, have attempted the journey since Lukashenko announced in May that he was loosening border controls against Western-bound migrants. That move followed EU sanctions for his harsh crackdown on internal dissent.