Tewelde Goitom, the head of one of the main networks of migrant smugglers between the Horn of Africa and the European continent, was extradited on Wednesday from Ethiopia to the Netherlands for his trial.
He had been arrested and tried in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, along with one of his collaborators and should appear once more, this Thursday but before the Dutch courts.
The Dutch prosecutor welcomed the arrival of Tewelde Goitom on Dutch soil on Wednesday. Aged 38, this Eritrean sowed terror between 2004 and 2008 in Libya: he was the most feared, the most brutal and the most hated trafficker between East Africa and the Mediterranean Sea.
In his torture center in Bani Walid, Tewelde Goitom liked to “parade with weapons of war” and “bragged of raping all the women who passed through his hands”, reported Eritrean reporter Meron Estefanos during her trial in Addis Ababa, last year.
Tewelde Goitom was then sentenced to 18 years in prison. It should be noted that the verdict had been rendered under high security given that Kidane Zekarias Habtemariam, another notorious trafficker, had escaped a few months earlier, in broad daylight, aided by elements of the judiciary.
The Dutch government nevertheless affirmed its “intention to bring the two men and the other members” of their organization to justice.
Indeed, apart from the crimes for which the Ethiopian justice condemned them, they are also accused of “extortion” by the relatives of the victims living in the Netherlands, which is why the Dutch justice claimed them.