Accusation
ANNOUNCEMENTS•
A 39-year-old Eritrean man appeared in Zwolle court today as the main suspect in a trial against a very violent human trafficking gang. The international criminal organization abused and raped migrants and extorted their relatives in the Netherlands, the prosecutor said.
The man was arrested in Ethiopia in 2020. He was sentenced last year to 18 years in prison for human trafficking in Africa. He was extradited to the Netherlands last October. The Public Prosecutor’s Office here wants to prosecute the Eritrean together with six other suspects, because, according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the crimes partly took place in our country.
“This means that the Netherlands is authorized to act,” a public prosecutor’s spokesperson clarified. “We think this is a very important case, to show how serious this type of crime is where people are seen as a commodity.”
Life threatening conditions
The human trafficker is said to have claimed dozens to hundreds of victims between 2014 and 2020. His gang is said to have mostly brought Eritreans into the Netherlands under life-threatening circumstances. After a journey through Ethiopia and Sudan, the migrants were detained in camps in Libya.
“There they were forced to pay an extra amount (for the crossing, ed), sometimes even 2,000 euros”, says the OM spokesman. Dutch family members and acquaintances of the migrants were also put under pressure by the organization to obtain these amounts. If no money came, serious assaults and rapes occurred.
It seems that several migrants died in the Libyan camps under the watchful eye of the gang. Countless migrants also drowned after being loaded onto barely seaworthy boats to Europe by the gang, according to the judiciary.
Collected in Sudan
The public prosecutor wants to deal with the man’s case at the same time as that of another main suspect, also a 39-year-old Eritrean. This man was arrested in Sudan on 1 January during an international police operation. He is now imprisoned in the UAE as a suspect in a money laundering investigation. The Netherlands has requested his extradition.
Five other people in the Netherlands will be summoned by the prosecutor for involvement in the extortion of family members of migrants. The trial against the traffickers will continue in April.
