Ethiopia arrests human trafficking ring behind smuggling of 3,000 victims

Ethiopian police said they arrested a "dangerous international human trafficker" and nine accomplices accused of smuggling over 3,000 people to Libya, where they were held hostage.

The human trafficking network has been under investigation since 2018, police said in a statement posted on Facebook on Wednesday, recruiting young people from Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Kenya, and Somalia who hoped to migrate to Europe through Libya.

The ring operated five warehouses, holding victims hostage while forcing their families to pay huge ransoms.

Those who could not pay were given only one meagre meal a day, beaten, whipped with rubber or electric cables, and had their hands and feet chained, police added.

One hundred deaths attributed to the human traffickers

Some victims were burned with plastic water bottles, police added.

"They engaged in illegally trafficking more than 3,000 people and killing over 100 of them," reads the police statement.

Police published mugshots of the seven men and three women arrested in connection with the criminal network.

The Ethiopian federal police, with support from Project ROCK, an EU-funded Interpol initiative, interviewed over 100 victims and their families during the investigation.

Large sums of money moved

They found that the network moved around $20 million through its operations.

Police said the probe had also uncovered more than 70 major human traffickers in Ethiopia and abroad.