Experts estimate approximately 3,000 children are exploited in street prostitution. Migrants who cannot pay are being sold for organs, smuggler tells Italian authorities. Nuredin Wehabrebi Atta, who was arrested by Italian police, is the first foreigner given witness protection by Italian authorities, after saying details that have led to arrests of dozens of alleged members of an elaborate criminal network trafficking drugs, arms and migrants from Africa to Europe. Those who were unable to pay for their voyages “were sold for €15,000 to groups, particularly Egyptians, who were involved in removing and selling organs,” Mr Atta claimed.
Children trafficked to EU countries by gangs
The number of children trafficked to EU countries by gangs - often for prostitution - is rising.
Thousands of migrant children are disappearing after arriving in mainland Europe, triggering concerns that they are falling prey to a new and thriving market for child trafficking and forced labour. Of some 12,164 unaccompanied minors who arrived in Italy from north Africa, about one-third have vanished from foster homes and government shelters, with the authorities warning they are likely to face sexual and labour exploitation if left unprotected. Hundreds of children, mainly from Egypt, Eritrea and Somalia. In Catania, on the eastern coast of Sicily, local NGOs say that Eritrean children have begun to be kidnapped from parks and train stations.
The report, which contains testimony from over 90 refugees in reception and processing centres in the South of Italy, graphically details the abuse suffered by migrants and refugees who pour into the country. Some migrants - who have to pay up to thousands of dollars in fees - were even sold on to other people smugglers after they’d arrived in the country and had their families held ransom whilst they were kept as virtual prisoners in squalid conditions.
A 22-year-old Eritrean woman told Amnesty that she witnessed one woman being gang-raped by around 5 people smugglers after accusing her of being unable to pay them.
“Her family couldn’t pay the money again. They took her away and she was raped by five Libyan men. They took her out late at night. No one opposed it, everyone was too afraid,” she said.
Most refugees and migrants pay all or part of their sea travel in cash in North Africa, but are required to pay the rest for further travel into Europe when they arrive in Italy.
Most Syrian families arriving "are middle class professionals, businessmen, shopkeepers, farmers" who "fled Syria one or two years ago on a costly journey, often passing through Lebanon and Egypt," where many spend months "in precarious conditions".
"In Libya we were molested, they told us to leave...we decided to go, to die at sea was better than the hell we were living there," 15-year-old Nadia from Homs was cited as saying.
Migrants subject to torture, sexual violence at the hands of smugglers, Amnesty finds
Alessandra Santovito