Sinai desert plagued by kidnap and torture - as the authorities bury their heads

horror stories emerging from bands of Sinai Bedouins who support Israel with refugees bound for a bailout

Hundreds of African refugees are being held hostage in the Sinai Desert in Egypt by traffickers who demand up to $ 40,000 (£ 25,000) each for their freedom, human rights activists have warned .

Industry

brutal traffic flourished in the last year for which bands of Bedouin, emboldened by his apparent impunity, extorting higher prices for migrant hostages.

Most hostages

Eritrea and Sudanese asylum seekers who paid $ 3,000 each to strip to get to the border with Israel. Instead, they are subjected to daily torture that their captors to call their families at home and abroad to demand large sums of money to save their lives.

Asmerom (not her real name) gets 10 calls a day from a childhood friend, who is among 30 women and 12 men from Eritrea, held in a camp in the Sinai . She contacts, since, unlike his family, who live in Israel and could access the money. She tells him to starve to death, beaten and burned with electric cables.

The 19-year kidnappers initially asked $ 40,000 for each of the 42 hostages, but after three weeks, the price dropped to $ 30,000. Smugglers say Asmerom, 20, should get the money to his agent in Israel quickly or he will kill her.

"call me when you hit. His hands and feet are tied so I put the phone in her mouth while she is screaming," said Asmeron, holding the phone in their hands. He looked horrified when it rings.

"I do not understand, they speak Arabic in Look, she's crying. '. Help me, help me" What can I do? "

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), an Israeli NGO, said Asmerom has no other choice than trying to make money. PHR runs a clinic in Jaffa, south of Tel Aviv, which provides medical care to asylum seekers and foreign workers without official status in Israel, are not eligible for anything but a medical emergency.

Each year thousands of Africans, most of them from Eritrea and Sudan, trying to reach Israel -. Something that the Israelis are ready to end

the past 18 months, PHR interviewed 900 people who were tortured in Sinai, and have traced a network of human trafficking that extends into refugee camps in Sudan and Eritrea. The NGO is aware of at least 350 detainees currently.

• Your clinic in Jaffa is familiar with the wounds inflicted by these bands. Torture methods include pouring hot plastic into the victim's body, shock, electric rape - including penetration with objects - and the brand with a hot iron. If these methods fail to extort money enough, the survivors say the smugglers, or kill their hostages or sell their organs.
• "We have heard of mass graves of hundreds of people," Shoham said Shahar, who heads the investigation of torture camps in the Sinai PHR.

Mogos Redae, 33, was released in June after nine months. Her family has raised money for the free sale of your home and valuables. He is lucky to be alive.

His captors send electric shocks to him and his fellow captives in front of young children, encouraging children to laugh as victims screamed in agony. Three men arrested with him were killed by the blows, while chained to a Redae.

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