Dutch prosecutors are seeking a 20-year prison sentence for Eritrean national Amanuel Walid, also known as Tewelde “Walid” Goitom, accused of running a brutal human-trafficking route from East Africa to Europe via Libya.
Prosecutors say that between 2014 and 2019, Walid’s network detained thousands of African migrants in warehouses in Libya, where they were systematically tortured, raped and abused to force relatives abroad to pay ransoms. Many of those relatives live in the Netherlands and other European countries.
According to victim statements, detainees were held in overcrowded hangars with little food, water or medical care. Beatings with cables and hoses, electric shocks and sexual violence were allegedly routine. Families in Europe were phoned while their loved ones were being tortured, so they could hear the screams in real time as traffickers demanded payments of thousands of dollars. Several migrants are believed to have died in captivity.
At the district court in Zwolle, the 42-year-old defendant, extradited from Ethiopia in 2022, broke his silence only to insist that Dutch authorities had arrested the wrong man and to invoke his right to remain silent. “I am not who they say I am,” he told judges via an interpreter. Prosecutors counter that his identity as “Walid” has been confirmed by hundreds of alleged victims, phone records, social-media evidence and a false passport.
The case is described as the largest human-trafficking trial ever in the Netherlands, with a dossier running to about 25,000 pages and evidence gathered with help from Italy, the UK, Spain, Europol and the International Criminal Court. It is also one of the very few European trials targeting high-level traffickers operating out of Libya.
Walid was previously convicted of similar offences in Ethiopia in 2021 before being handed over to Dutch authorities. His defence argues that he is a victim of mistaken identity and has challenged both Dutch jurisdiction and the risk of being effectively tried twice for overlapping conduct.
Since the collapse of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011, Libya has become a key — and often deadly — transit point for migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. Rights groups and UN investigators have long documented a web of detention centres and warehouses where people are extorted, abused and traded between criminal groups.
Judges in Zwolle are expected to deliver a verdict in January 2026. Until then, Eritrean diaspora groups and victims’ families say they will be watching closely, hoping the trial sets a precedent for holding major traffickers accountable far from where their crimes were committed. Africa News+1
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