CAIRO: On Wednesday November 30, a report by several human right organizations emerged, revealing that hundreds of refugees are tortured by smugglers in the Sinai on their way to Israel. The smugglers are cooperating with Israeli partners, and demand enormous amounts of ransom payments. Some who managed to reach Israel report that they have been the targets of extreme violence. Israel's Physicians for Human Rights and the Hotline for Migrant Workers, in cooperation with Swedish, US and Italian human rights organizations published a report, calling on the Egyptian and Israeli governments to act against the “torture camps” in the Sinai desert. According to the report, the “refugees are supposed to experience physical abuse, torture, systematic rape and even death, all with the objective to obtain tens of thousands of dollars in ransom money in exchange for their release.” The report called on Egypt, Israel and the international community “to act quickly in order to free the hostages [...] prosecute the smugglers and those that assist them (and) to bring an immediate end to the torture camps and networks of human smuggling.” This is not the first time migrants are citing mistreatment in the Sinai desert. Earlier this year also Hotline for Migrant Workers reported on the subject quoting 60 migrants who suffered torture at the hands of smugglers in the Sinai. “According to some of the testimonies, several victims were either murdered by the traffickers or were starved to death. Some 18 separate testimonies report that during the summer of 2010, 18 men were forced into slave labor, the majority of them building a three-story house for two of the traffickers. The victims report not just physical abuse, but also psychological torture and humiliation. Seven of the victims reported that the traffickers threatened to sell their organs for transplant,” Hotline for Migrant Workers stated. Some have accused Israel of not doing enough to fight against cooperation with human traffickers in Sinai. Last Friday, Eritrean refugees demonstrated in front of the US embassy in Tel Aviv in order to attract attention for the Eritrean asylum seekers who were tortured and raped by Israeli smugglers who took them to the Israeli border. While trying to reach Israel through the Sinai, they were being held captive by smugglers at torture camps in the El-Arish area. According to a report by Physicians for Human Rights- Israel “the smugglers were demanding ransoms of thousands of dollars for the release of each captive. Methods used to apply pressure on the captives' relatives to pay up include systematic violence and torture of the hostages.” BM
