By: Danielle L. Gwozdz
Impunity Watch News Reporter, Africa

ASMARA, Eritrea – Up to 30,000 Eritreans have been abducted since 2007 and taken to Egypt’s Sinai to suffer torture and ransom demands, new research says.

The study, presented to the European parliament, says Eritrean and Sudanese security officers are plotting with the kidnap gangs.

The report focuses on the trafficking of refugees from the Horn of Africa who are targeted by criminal networks for extortion and exploitation. The report looks at the experiences of the refugees who have fled their countries looking for safety and security.

The captives are threatened with being sold to people traffickers if they do not raise tens of thousands of dollars. Some are freed if they raise the ransoms. Others are sold on to traffickers, even after money has changed hands, only to be tortured to extract further cash from relatives.

At least $600m has been extorted from families in ransom payments, the report says.

Eritrea has denied its officials are involved in the kidnappings. The report, however, says Eritrea’s Border Surveillance Unit (BSU) and Sudanese security officials are among the “actors” conspiring with the gangs that hold people hostage in the largely lawless Sinai.  

Most of those targeted are Eritrean refugees fleeing the country.

Almost every Eritrean knows somebody who has been held hostage.

“Their captors are opportunistic criminals looking to profit from their vulnerability,” the report says.

“[The victims] are then taken to the Sinai and sold, sometimes more than once, to Bedouin groups living in Sinai.”

These hostages include men, women, children, and infants fleeing from desperate circumstances in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Sudan. An estimated 95% are from Eritrea.

Many of the hostages die in captivity or after their release. Some simply disappear – killed while being held, shot by border guards, or from just being lost in the desert.

The study interviewed an Eritrean woman living in Sweden who told them her son was abducted from the camp. He and six other children were forced into a car by a high-ranking Sawa military officer and driven into Sudan. Once there, they were made to call their parents, who were given three days to pay $7,500 or they would be sold to traffickers.

“[The hostages] are chained together without toilets or washing facilities and dehydrated, starved, and deprived of sleep,” the report says.

“They are subject to threats of death and organ harvesting . . . . Those who attempt to escape are severely tortured.”

The report said trafficking would have been impossible without the direct involvement of Eritrean security officials, given the “restrictions on movement within the country, the requirement of exit visas at the border and the shoot-to-kill policy for illegal border crossing.”

Eritrea’s UK ambassador said Eritrea is a “victim of human trafficking” and that the government was “working hard” to arrest and bring justice to justice criminal gangs operating along its border.

For more information, please visit:

BBC News – Thousands of Eritreans ‘abducted to Sinai for ransom’ – 4 December 2013
Free Republic – Thousands of Eritreans ‘abducted to Sinai for ransom’ – 6 December 2013
WADR – Thousands of Eritreans ‘abducted to Sinai for ransom’ – 5 December 2013
Agencia Angola Press – Thousands of Eritreans ‘abducted to Sinai for ransom’ – 7 December 2013
allAfrica – Eritrea: The Human Trafficking Cycle: Sinai and Beyond – 2 December 2013
The Guardian – Eritrea’s military is trafficking the nation’s children, report says – 3 December 2013