A trial has begun in the Netherlands of an Eritrean man accused of being one of the world’s most notorious human traffickers, overseeing an operation in Libya which held thousands of people for ransom and transported many across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.
Tewelde Goitom, widely known as Walid, was already found guilty in an Ethiopian court in 2021, after he was apprehended in Addis Ababa in early 2020.
He was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
The defendant on trial in the Dutch city of Zwolle has denied that he is the person in question, though he has been positively identified by victims.
RM Block
The Irish Times has been reporting on abuses by Goitom, since early 2020, including attending the defendant’s original trial in Ethiopia, where he was found guilty of five counts of smuggling and trafficking and sentenced to 18 years in prison.
He was later extradited to the Netherlands, where proceedings began earlier this week and are expected to continue for at least nine days.
Over the years, dozens of victims of Goitom and another trafficker, Kidane Zekarias Habtemariam, have told The Irish Times about abuses they suffered while under the control of the two men.
Most who spoke were from Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia.
They said that while they initially agreed a certain fee to be taken across the Mediterranean to Europe, the conditions changed once they reached Libya.
[ Notorious human trafficker extradited to Netherlands from EthiopiaOpens in new window ]
They were locked up for months or even years, and forced to pay huge sums of money, often repeatedly, while hundreds or even thousands were held together in warehouses where they were starved, beaten and abused.
They were regularly forced to line up and call family members to request payment.
Relatives of those held described having to sell property or gold, or begging in streets, markets, and churches, making appeals on the radio and crowdfunding through Facebook or WhatsApp groups.
The two men operated in Libya from roughly 2014 to 2018, during which time they are accused of smuggling tens of thousands of people, with some later crossing the sea to Europe and others getting trapped in official detention centres, or even dying under the traffickers’ custody. The conditions became worse as EU border policies hardened, leaving victims with no way to escape.
In court this week, a judge read out testimonies from victims which included similar accounts of being locked up in a warehouse, beaten – including with “electric” whips, extorted, starved and becoming aware of sexual violence by Goitom.
So far, the defendant has repeatedly invoked a right to remain silent.
The witnesses said that Goitom used “kapos”, fellow travellers who were recruited by him, to carry out abuse and enforce rules.
One witness, whose testimony was read aloud, recalled that upon arriving in Libya in June 2017, he was told: “From now on, you belong to Walid.”
He said he remained in captivity for six months, during which period around 30 people died. He said women gave birth without medical care and newborn babies died afterwards. There were a lot of people in a small place, many of them coughing, and not enough food, only pasta. He said people could be beaten publicly for asking for more to eat.
The witness, who was not named, said he had to pay $3,500 (€3,035). His sister – one of the people he called from the warehouse – had recently arrived in the Netherlands.
She said she could hear him yelling on the phone, saying he was being tortured. She would communicate his appeals to their parents.
Later, she said an intermediary told her that her brother would have to pay money a second time, before he would be allowed to get on a boat towards Europe, as they had been “hijacked”. After this, her brother made it to Italy.
Another witness, who was in his mid 20s when he arrived in Italy in December 2017, said people in the warehouses were infected with tuberculosis and scabies. He estimated that 10,000 people were being held there, with only a low wall between Goitom and Habtemariam’s areas. A lot of women were raped, he said.
Habtemariam was also apprehended in Ethiopia in early 2020 and put on trial later that year, but he managed to escape before the verdict. He was sentenced to life in prison, without parole, in absentia.
Habtemariam was apprehended again in Sudan in early 2023, and extradited to the UAE, where he was expected to face trial for money laundering.
Dutch prosecutors are hoping that Habtemariam will also be extradited to the Netherlands soon. They put a significant amount of effort into their investigations into both men, including setting up a hotline which could be contacted through Tigrinya.
Victims have asked for the money paid to the men – some of which is known to have passed through the UAE or into Europe – to be traced and recovered.
