The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has extradited a 41-year-old Eritrean to the Netherlands. The man is suspected of participating in a criminal organization that was involved in human smuggling, hostage-taking, extortion and violence, including sexual violence. That reports the Public Prosecution Service (OM) on Wednesday. According to the ANP news agency, it is Kidane H. In 2023, the Netherlands submitted an extradition request for the man.
H. smuggled thousands of African migrants via Libya to Europe for several years, the Public Prosecution Service says. In the North African country, migrants are said to have been abused daily using electricity, water hoses and whips, among other things. Sexual exploitation is also alleged to have taken place. Furthermore, despite the heat, prisoners received insufficient food and clean drinking water. In the meantime, H. was extorting relatives of migrants who already lived in the Netherlands, according to the Public Prosecution Service: only when payment was made would the violence stop and the prisoners could continue their journey, the threat said.
“The revenue model of the criminal organization directly links the Netherlands to the systematic abuse in the Libyan camps,” the Public Prosecutor previously stated. “After all, no smuggling without payments, no payments without extortion, no extortion without violence.”
H.’s organization would transport migrants with often full, dilapidated boats, which suffered a leak or were left without a captain in the Mediterranean. An unknown number of migrants are said to have drowned due to the actions of the smugglers.
H. was detained in Ethiopia a few years ago, but fled in February 2021, prior to a court hearing in the capital Addis Ababa. The United Arab Emirates arrested him again in Sudan in early 2023. He was recently detained in Dubai on suspicion of money laundering.
In addition to H., there is also a criminal case against a 42-year-old suspected Eritrean Amanuel W., who is said to be part of the same criminal organization. Last month, the Public Prosecution Service demanded twenty years in prison “for human smuggling of the most heinous kind” in Libya. The judge will rule in that case on January 27. However, the suspect’s lawyers want Kidane H., who has now been extradited, to be heard as a witness.
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