By Stephanie van den Berg
THE HAGUE, Jan 27 (Reuters) – An Eritrean people trafficker who tortured African refugees and migrants in camps in Libya was jailed for 20 years on Tuesday by a Dutch court, with a judge saying he had “no regard for human dignity”.
Judges said 42-year-old Amanuel Walid – known as Tewelde Goitom – ran a migration route to Europe via Libya. He was convicted on charges of membership of a criminal organisation, human trafficking and extortion.
Prosecutors, whose investigation focused on the period between 2014 and 2019, said Walid’s group detained thousands of African migrants in warehouses and tortured them to extort ransoms from their families.
“You and your co-perpetrators have treated (migrants) in a ruthless and merciless manner with no regard for human dignity and this, it seems, only to extort as much money as possible from vulnerable and helpless people seeking a better future,” presiding judge Rene Melaard said.
During his trial Walid, who was extradited to the Netherlands in 2022, only spoke to tell judges he was the victim of mistaken identity and to invoke his right to remain silent. Judges ruled on Tuesday that the man in the dock was Walid.
The trial is the largest human trafficking case ever in the Netherlands and one of the few in Europe looking into criminal networks trafficking migrants through Libya.
Since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi during a NATO-backed uprising in 2011, Libya has become a transit route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe across the Mediterranean.
Under the concept of universal jurisdiction, Dutch law broadly allows cases to be brought against foreign nationals for crimes committed abroad if the victims are in the Netherlands.
(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; Editing by Alison Williams)
