An Israeli man was charged on Sunday with participating in human trafficking and the torture of African migrants in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, local Israel media reported.
According to the reported indictment, a Bedouin from the Negev in southern Israel, accused the man of taking thousands of dollars from Eritrean and Sudanese migrants in Israel in order to allegedly smuggle their relatives across the Sinai desert and into Israel.
According to court details, over the past 9 months the man had received some $40,000 for relatives held captive and tortured by Bedouin tribes in both Israel and Egypt.
The Bedouin were supposed to smuggle them over the border into Israel. According to the indictment, the traffickers threatened to kill the captives or remove their kidneys for sale if their relatives in Israel did not pay.
In recent years, the porous border in Egypt’s Sinai has seen a number of shooting deaths, mainly of African migrants seeking to enter Israel in search of a better life.
International and local human rights groups have called on both Egypt and Israel to end their “shoot to stop” policy that has led to scores of “unnecessary deaths” in recent years.
According to Israel, tens of thousands of Africans have illegally entered the country in recent years, prompting Israel to begin to erect a border fence to force out migrants
