Sinai torture for Eritreans kidnapped by traffickers
By Mike Thomson BBC News, Sinai
6 March 2013 Last updated at 11:31 GMT
Lamlam, 17, is one of thousands of people who make the treacherous journey
from Eritrea to Egypt each year. Many fall victim to unscrupulous people
traffickers, who kidnap them and demand ransom money from their families.
"The kidnappers would make me lie on my back and then they would get me to
ring my family to ask them to pay the ransom they wanted," she says, lifting
up the back of her shirt to expose a rash of deep scars.
"As soon as one of my parents answered the phone, the men would melt flaming
plastic over my back and inner thighs and I would scream and scream in pain.
"This, they hoped, would put extra pressure on my mother and father to find
the money."
A man standing next to her gently places a hand on her shoulder as she
finishes speaking.
Zere, his faced swathed in a red and white scarf, was one of those kept with
her in a windowless basement room for almost a year.
"They had about four of five of us tied up together and they would pour
water on the floor and then electrocute the water so that all of us would
get electrocuted at the same time," he says.
"They would starve us, they would burn us and they would not let us sleep."
Zere says that nine out of the 20 people held hostage with him died. But, he
tells me, by that point those still alive would have welcomed that fate.
"All of us were actually hoping for death because that would have been an
escape from the torture."
In fact Lamlam and Zere were able to escape - rescued by a local Bedouin
leader, Sheikh Mohammed al-Maniri.
A small building at the back of his house is now home to a dozen people that
he has rescued.
Sometimes though, he says, it is too late.
"Many people we bring here have been really badly tortured.
"In two cases recently some of those we rescued died, here in this house,
because they had been injured so much."
'Hundreds of bodies'
The UN has described the growth of the kidnap and people trafficking trades
in Sinai as one of the most unreported humanitarian crises in the world.
It estimates that 3,000 Eritreans alone fled their repressive and
impoverished country last year.
Many headed for the swollen refugee camps of neighbouring eastern Sudan, now
home to more than 90,000 people.
The UN says that 70% of the new arrivals then vanish.
Many fall into the hands of ruthless and well-armed people-smuggling gangs
as they try to make their way to Israel or Egypt in search of a better life.
Whilst some do make it through, others are sold on to different gangs two or
three times as they are trafficked north.
Hostage victims are often taken to the largely lawless, desert area of north
Sinai, where their kidnappers can operate with near impunity.
In 2012, the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said
that a "criminal network" of smugglers and traffickers was "taking profit of
the desperate situation of many Eritreans".
Egyptian security forces do operate in this region but only in limited
numbers because of a long-standing peace agreement with neighbouring Israel.
In the mortuary in the town of El Arish, the extent of the carnage caused by
the gruesome kidnap trade is even more evident.
"Since the revolution there have been hundreds of bodies because the borders
have been more lax," says mortician Era Ki, as he points towards the
deep-freeze cabinets in front of us.
"The corpses usually have torture-style injuries.
"The ones that come from the Bedouin [people-traffickers] have always been
tortured to get their families to pay ransoms.
"If their families can't pay, they have no use for them and torture them to
death."
Even those whose families somehow manage to pay the large ransoms demanded,
often feel they cannot go home now that their relatives have been
financially ruined.
Berhane, an Eritrean refugee I met living in a squalid Cairo slum is one.
After being beaten, tortured and electrocuted for months before his family
paid $30,000 (£20,000) for his release, he says he has constant terrifying
flashbacks and cannot face going home.
Berhane has this message for any Eritreans thinking of following in his
footsteps: "Stay where you are.
"Whatever you do, don't let yourself fall into the hands of the
traffickers."
Mike Thomson's Assignment, Escape from Sinai, will be broadcast on the BBC
World Service on <
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p002vsn0> Thursday 7
March at 09:05 GMT.
A news report will also be featured on Radio 4's Today Programme on
Find out more
* Listen via BBC iPlayer <
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p002vsn0>
* Browse the podcast documentary archive
<
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/docarchive>
* More from BBC World Service <
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldserviceradio>
'Please help me'
I will never forgot the desperate words, broadcast on the BBC, of an
Eritrean refugee who was being held hostage in Egypt's north Sinai.
"It's bad, bad. Have no enough food, enough water," a tearful and desperate
man called Philemon Semere told me on the phone last November.
"Always hit by sticks and burnt by fire and electricity. Daily burning by
fire. My body is burning. Please, please help me, Mike."
Semere, along with two other Eritrean refugees, is still in the hands of his
kidnappers who have threatened to kill him if his family fails to pay the
$25,000 they are demanding.
When I asked the leader of the kidnappers how he could justify torturing and
murdering hostages he replied without any sense of shame or regret: "A lot
of people I have killed here. This is my work, I live by this work."
* Listen to the interview
<
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9772000/9772577.stm>
* Mortician Era Ki says many of the corpses bear the signs of torture
------------[ Sent via the dehai-wn mailing list by dehai.org]--------------
Received on Wed Mar 06 2013 - 18:01:01 EST
