THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A Dutch court convicted an Eritrean man on Tuesday of people smuggling and extortion and sentenced him to the maximum 20 years imprisonment, saying that he and his accomplices subjected migrants to “cruel, violent, and degrading treatment.”
Tewelde Goitom, also known as Amanuel Walid, was found guilty by the Overijssel District Court of leading a criminal organization that mistreated migrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe and extorted money from their families in the Netherlands to pay for the risky voyages.
The court rejected his defense that he was not the person identified by witnesses as a leader of a notorious smuggling network that shipped people from Libya to Europe and often onward to the Netherlands, where they applied for asylum.
Presiding Judge René Melaard called the case “exceptionally serious” because of both the nature and scope of the crimes.
“On the one hand, because of the gross undermining of Dutch and European immigration policy, but on the other, and especially, because of the particularly cruel, violent and degrading treatment to which you and your accomplices subjected the migrants,” Melaard said.
“You, along with your accomplices, were merciless, unscrupulous, and devoid of regard for human dignity in your treatment” of the migrants “apparently solely to extort as much money as possible from vulnerable and helpless people seeking a better future,” Melaard added.
Goitom, 42, was also ordered to pay more than 30,000 euros ($35,000) in damages to victims. He has two weeks to appeal his conviction.
Migrants seeking to get to Europe were held by Goitom's network in camps in Libya, where they were “mistreated while being forced to call family members, who were pressured to transfer money for their relatives’ passage,” the court said in a statement. “Only when their passage to Europe had been paid for was a migrant eligible to leave the camp and continue their journey.”
In a message on X, the prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court welcomed the verdicts, saying that it had shared evidence in the case as part of a joint team investigating crimes against migrants in Libya. The ICC has an ongoing investigation in Libya.
At the opening of the trial in November, Goitom told judges that he was a victim of mistaken identity. He was extradited to the Netherlands in 2022 from Ethiopia, where he was convicted of similar crimes.
Goitom's case was delayed by the lengthy extradition process of another man, Kidane Zekarias Habtemariam, who escaped during trial in Ethiopia in 2020. Described as one of ’’the world’s most wanted″ human traffickers, Habtemariam was extradited from the United Arab Emirates to the Netherlands in late December and is expected to stand trial in a Dutch court at a later date.
Habtemariam was convicted in absentia and sentenced to life imprisonment after escaping from custody in Ethiopia while on trial on people smuggling charges.
Both men are facing justice in the Netherlands because Dutch prosecutors say some of their alleged crimes happened in the Netherlands. They say that Dutch-based relatives of migrants seeking to make the perilous journey from East Africa through Libya and across the Mediterranean to Europe were extorted by people smugglers.
Goitom's defense lawyers disagree. “There is no clear connection to the Netherlands,” Simcha Plas argued, saying that the payments were made in Eritrea or via the UAE, and that the Netherlands lacks jurisdiction.
The court rejected that argument as they convicted Goitom of multiple charges of complicity in people smuggling and extortion. He was acquitted in the cases of two migrants because judges said there was insufficient evidence.
Follow AP’s global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
FILE - Migrants from Eritrea, Libya and Sudan sail a wooden boat before being assisted by aid workers of the Spanish NGO Open Arms, in the Mediterranean sea, about 30 miles north of Libya, Saturday, June 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Joan Mateu Parra, File)
