Eritrean refugees. Everyone group has filed a criminal charge against the traffickers

Sinai, eritrean refugees. Everyone group has approached the egyptian authorities and filed a criminal charge against the traffickers .

Rome/Cairo, December 7th, 2010. EveryOne Group has pressed criminal charges against the traffickers for kidnapping for ransom and extortion, torture, murder, serious bodily harm, threats and trafficking in human beings.

This is the latest action taken by the international human rights organization EveryOne Group, who along with Agenzia Habeshia and several other humanitarian associations, is following the case of the 250 prisoners (including Sudanese, Somali, Ethiopian and Eritrean migrants) who for the last month have been in the hands of traffickers in northern Sinai, on the border between Egypt and Israel.

“After contacting the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior, we have pressed charges against the traffickers at the office of the Public Prosecutor in Cairo, Maher Abd al-Wahid (with notification to the President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak; the Prime Minister, Ahmed Mahmoud Mohamed Nazif; and the Interior Minister, General Habib Ibrahim Habib El Adly). The notification comes from the NGO's three co-presidents, Roberto Malini, Matteo Pegoraro and Dario Picciau. “Last night when we filed the charge, we included all the details and information in our possession: the mobile phones of the traffickers and the exact location the prisoners are being held in; the drastic conditions the migrants are living in; the dynamics of the murders already committed; local contacts for reaching the Bedouin city; and the names of two of their prison guards.

All information we have gathered together thanks to one of the refugees we are in constant contact with. Unfortunately, the latest news about the 74 Eritreans - and the other 176 refugees in the Sinai - is not at all comforting. The migrants are running out of strength and the inertia of the Egyptian authorities (as well as the delay of the international organisms in taking action) is the prelude for further tragedy. In spite of us pressing charges -which the Egyptian authorities must formally take up - international pressure must be felt in order to speed up action in the area.

We need concrete help from the Italian Foreign Office and from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi” continue the activists of EveryOne, “and not a mere notification of the case to the Egyptian Foreign Office. We also need the Italian and international media to treat this episode as a priority, and for the United Nations, the institutions of the European Union and the Vatican to do their utmost to prevent this inadmissible crime continuing against innocent human beings – who have a right to international protection - certainly not this indifference.”

In the photograph, Hosni Mubarak, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt

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