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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/15b0484e-8dbd-11ed-b06e-ab31665740df

Kidane Zekarias Habtemariam: World’s most wanted people smuggler arrested in Sudan

The “world’s most wanted” people smuggler has been arrested by Interpol in Sudan, the international police agency has said, in an operation that may disrupt one of the biggest migrant trafficking routes from Africa to Europe.

Kidane Zekarias Habtemariam was arrested on New Year’s Day in a global operation led by the United Arab Emirates. He is accused of trafficking thousands of victims, laundering millions of dollars, and running squalid camps in northern Libya where east Africans seeking passage to Europe were raped, kidnapped, extorted and murdered.

At warehouses in the town of Bani Walid, migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan were allegedly held captive by armed guards after paying to reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea.

“They raped virgin women. They beat people to death. They ransomed enormous amounts of money from each of us and in doing so they used all tools of torture,” a 22-year-old victim told Vice News last year. “They starved people and many died as a result.”

Habtemariam was arrested in Ethiopia two years ago after one of his victims recognised him in the street but absconded during his trial in Addis Ababa, prompting an investigation into whether he had bribed a guard to let him escape.

He is the subject of at least two Interpol red notices and Dutch prosecutors offered a €20,000 reward for his arrest. Ethiopia sentenced him in absentia to life in prison.

Having travelled through Africa using a variety of aliases the Eritrean suspect, thought to be in his early 50s, was arrested with nine of his henchmen by Sudanese police after the UAE tracked illicit financial transactions made by his brother.

Saeed Abdullah al-Suwaidi, a UAE official, said yesterday: “We have now shut down one of the most important trafficking routes into Europe, which illegally moved thousands of migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan, through Libya and into Europe.”

Interpol said the arrests would “protect thousands more from being exploited at the hands of the crime group”, and vowed to continue tracking down the rest of Habtemariam’s criminal network.

In conflict, economic crisis and drought caused by climate change, thousands of east Africans have traipsed through the Sahara to Libya in an effort to reach European shores. Analysts say that people smugglers are responsible for hundreds of deaths every year through ill treatment and abuse, or perilous sea crossings.

Habtemariam, who has a reputation for “particularly cruel and violent treatment of migrants” has been extradited to the UAE, where he will face trial for money laundering. It is not yet clear whether he will also face human trafficking charges in other jurisdictions.

He has been accused of working with Tewelde Goitom, a convicted trafficker known as Welid, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison in Ethiopia in 2021. Welid is also Eritrean, and infamous for the number of prisoners he raped.

At the time of Welid’s trial, victims described an organised scheme in which they agreed a fee for quick passage to Europe but found the price had vastly increased once they reached Libya. Those who could not quickly pay were tortured.

Al-Suwaidi said the kingpin’s arrest was “just the beginning of hunting down the rest of Habtemariam’s network”.