CNN:Death in the desert

كلمة للمدونة قبل كل شيء : منذ أقل من أسبوعين قناة ( 25) بعمل تحقيق غير مهني كما وصفه البعض عن جثث أفارقة تم اكتشاف دفنها فير منطقة صحراوية بوسط سيناء ( اضغط هنا لمزيد من التفاصيل عن ذلك ) ليس بعيدا ً عن

الصورة الرئيسية التي وضعتها سي إن إن علة صدر تقريرها عن سرقة أعضاء المتسليين الأفارقة تحت عنوان الموت في الصحراء

هذا التاريخ  قامت محطة سي إن إن CNNالأمريكية الشهيرة بعمل تحقيق موسع ل : فريد بليتن Fred Pleitgen ومحمد فاضل فهمي Mohamed Fadel Fahmy- عن سرقة أعضاء المتسللسن الأفارقة – على مدي حلقتين استعانت فيهما بخبراء في مجال حقوق الأنسان مثل حمدي العزازي رئيس جمعية الجيل لحقوق الأنسان – سيناء – مصر – والدكتور فكرى صالح وهو طبيب شرعي ومهتم بقضية تجارة الأعضاء , كما أجرت – حسب ما جاء في التقرير لقاءات مع رجال قبائل من قبيلة الترابين وقبيلة السواركة  , في التقرير أيضا وصفت منطقة المهدية على الحدود بأنها الأخطر في سيناء , أما الملفت للنظر بالفعل أنها أجرت لقاءت في الفيديو المرفق بالتقرير مع بعض المتسليين الأفارقة أحدهم قادم من السودان , كل هذا يثير مجموعة من الأسئلة لعل أهمها :

- لماذا لم يظهر التقرير علة موقع سي إن إن أرابيك ؟؟

- كلنا متفقين على أن هذا الموضوع لا أنساني ويعتبر جريمة ضد الأنسانية لكن هل بالفعل هناك تجارة للأعضاء البشرية وهل وجود صورة مثل التي عرضتها سي إن إن كدليل يعتبر كاف على حدوث مثل هذه الإنتهاكات ؟؟

- لماذا ركزت سي أن أن على المهدية بالذات واعتبرتها المنطقة الأخطر في سيناء – كما جاء في مفطع الفيديو المرفق مع التقرير الأول ؟؟

- هل من المهنية ما دمت أتحرك في منطقة معلوماتي عنها شحيحة أن ألقي الإتهامات هكذا جزافا ً دون دليل واضح ؟؟

( سيناء حيث أنا )

الان وقبل قراءة جزأي التقرير بالأنجليزية يمكنكم قراءة ترجمة جوجل علي الروابط ( لترجمة الجزء الأول من الإنجليزية للعربية اضغط هنا )  ( لترجمة الجزء الثاني من الإنجليزية للعربية أضغط هنا )

مقطع فيديو مرفق بالتقرير الثاني

 

Death in the desert: Tribesmen exploit battle to reach Israel

By Fred Pleitgen and Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, CNN

بشكل لا أظنه مهنيا ً وصفت سي إن أن قرية المهدية بأنها الأخطر في سيناء

CNN’s Freedom Project special “Death in the Desert” airs on Saturday, November 5 at 2100 HK / 1700 Abu Dhabi / 2100 CET / 2030PM ET; Sunday, November 6 at 1800 HK / 2100 Abu Dhabi / 1800 CET; Tuesday, November 8 at 2130 Abu Dhabi / 1830 CET.

El Arish, Egypt (CNN) — “I wanted to build a good future for my family, but I failed,” a weak Issam Abdallah Mohammed said in a videotaped statement.The refugee from the Darfur region of Sudan was trying to illegally cross the border from Egypt to Israel when he was discovered and shot by Egyptian border guards.

Less than an hour after taping the statement, Issam was dead, succumbing to the wounds inflicted by the gunshots.

Every year, thousands of refugees, mostly from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan, attempt the dangerous journey from their war-torn countries to Israel in search of economic prosperity and stability.

الصورة التي استندت عليها سي إن أن كدليل على سرقة أعضاء الأفارقة : هل هذا دليل كاف

Ending organ trafficking

Very few make it, and the results of the failed migration can be seen in the morgue of the central hospital in the Egyptian port town of El Arish.

When a CNN crew visited there recently, all the refrigeration units were broken, leaving a biting stench of decaying corpses in the air, which staff members attempted in vain to cover up with chlorine-based cleaner and incense.

On any given day, the morgue will be packed with the bodies of African refugees who died trying to make it to Israel.

Hamdy Al-Azazy spends a lot of time here as head of the New Generation Foundation for Human Rights, which tries to help African refugees in Egypt.

Every week, Al-Azazy combs the desert, searching for corpses, ensuring that they get a dignified burial.

حمدي العزازي رئيس جمعية الجيل الجديد - سيناء لحقوق الأنسان

He has spent the past seven years helping the refugees. Many are enslaved and tortured and the women raped by the Bedouin tribes of the Sinai if they are unable to come up with large sums of money the Bedouin try to extort from them and their families, to smuggle the refugees across the border into Israel. As a result, many remain imprisoned in camps on the Sinai Peninsula.”They are chained and kept in camps in the open with no bathrooms and little water and food and treated worse than animals,” Al-Azazy said.

“Some of them are taken to Libya, but 80% of them are smuggled to Israel. Those who escape are shot by the Bedouins, and others who make it to the border are sometimes shot by the Egyptian authorities and transferred to hospitals before spending a year in different prisons in Sinai and deported back home.”

The CNN crew found two victims in the hospital in El Arish, handcuffed to their beds and awaiting their transfer to an Egyptian detention center and eventual deportation.

One of them, Mahary Taklay Abraham of Eritrea, says he hit his head falling off a rock while trying to cross the border and was caught by Egyptian border guards. But before making it to the border, Mahary says, he spent about two months with the Bedouins.

“They beat and tortured me continuously and demanded money from my family,” Mahary said.

Al-Azazy says this is a common scheme. The refugees will pay Bedouin tribes in the border area between Sudan and Egypt around $2,000 to be smuggled out. The smugglers then sell the refugees to the Sinai Bedouin, who blackmail the refugees and their families back home.

د. فكري صالح طبيب شرعي القاهرة ومهتم بقضية تجارة الأعضاء

Ibrahim Yehia of Eritrea says he fell prey to the Bedouin.

“When we arrived to Sinai, the Bedouins tied me up with metal chains in the desert. They tortured us. Many of us died,” he said, displaying his wounds, including scars that he says came from electroshock torture.

“They wanted me to pay $12,000 and forced us to call our families to transfer the money. My family sold all their lands and even their donkey to collect the money. They transferred $6,000 to the Bedouins.”After his family paid, Yehia says, the Bedouin finally let him go”I spent three months tied up in the camp close to the Israeli border. After I paid, the Bedouins drove me to the border crossing and set me free. I was then shot by plainclothes men close to the wired fence at the Israeli-Egyptian border. The military took me to the hospital.”

Some of the refugees are forced into slave labor, often working marijuana fields that flourish all over Northern Sinai, Hamdy Al-Azazy says. Refugees who made it across the border into Israel have told harrowing accounts of rape, torture and slave labor.

Women are especially vulnerable. CNN spoke to one victim who made it to Israel and spoke on condition of anonymity. She said she was raped almost daily on a journey that took several months to get to Tel Aviv.

“Every night, they took me separately, and they did whatever they wanted to my body,” the Eritrean said.

Al-Azazy hears stories like this all the time. “The women and men are kept in open areas. These Bedouins don’t have any morals or conscience. One girl told me that three Bedouins had raped 14 girls in one night,” he said.

When CNN confronted a leader of the Sawarka Bedouin tribe, one of the largest in Sinai, the chief said he was aware that people trafficking is going on in Sinai and that in some cases African refugees are held in bonded labor, tortured and women raped.

The Sawarka chief, who did not want to be named for this report, said that only rogue elements of the tribe are involved in people trafficking.

This same chief took CNN to a secret location and allowed them to speak to five African refugees who were hoping to make it to Israel, in an apparent bid to show us that the refugees were being well treated.

But interviews with refugees who have escaped the camps or been released suggest that mistreatment and even murder are commonplace in the Bedouin camps.

One Bedouin leader willing to go on record is called Salem, a powerful chief of the Tarabine tribe.

He acknowledges that people trafficking exists among members of the Tarabine and Sawarka tribes, but he says that it is only a fraction of the members who are involved in the trade and that they are ruthless.

“You can’t label the whole tribe or implicate it in this trade. The Bedouins in Sinai are over 150,000. Those working in this business will not exceed more than 50 people.”

During an interview by the Red Sea, Salem said he loathes those involved in people trafficking, torture, rape and murder.

But he acknowledges that Bedouin leaders are doing little to stop the illicit business out of fear of stoking tribal infighting.

“These guys are evil. They do not care where to get money. They deal with a middleman in Africa to get those men. These Africans spend months here, sometimes up to six months in Sinai, before crossing — if they cross.”

Egypt’s government and armed forces seem powerless to stop the Bedouin smugglers.

Police units have been forced out of most areas in North Sinai after the revolution that swept longtime leader Hosni Mubarak from power. A military operation aimed at combating Islamist extremists in the area has done little to stop people trafficking in this lawless region that runs mostly on criminal activity, such as smuggling of goods into Gaza and drug trafficking.

Meanwhile, more bodies turn up in the Sinai desert. In a matter of weeks, several more were buried by Hamdy Al-Azazy close to the grave of Issam Abdallah Mohammed, the refugee from Darfur who recorded a video shortly before his death.

While the bodies of those who can be identified are buried in cemeteries in El Arish, the many corpses that remain nameless — because they carry no identity cards or have decomposed beyond recognition — are laid to rest outside the cemetery walls in an anonymous mass grave under heaps of trash from an adjacent slum.

Refugees face organ theft in the Sinai

By Fred Pleitgen and Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, CNN

Saturday, November 5 at 2100 HK / 1700 Abu Dhabi / 2100 CET / 2030PM ET; Sunday, November 6 at 1800 HK / 2100 Abu Dhabi / 1800 CET; Tuesday, November 8 at 2130 Abu Dhabi / 1830 CET.

El Arish, Egypt (CNN) — Bedouin smugglers involved in people trafficking are also believed to be stealing organs from refugees who are unable to pay their demands for large amounts of cash to take them into Israel.

The New Generation Foundation for Human Rights and the EveryOne Group, from Italy, have presented evidence that the bodies of African refugees have been found in the Sinai desert with organs missing.

Read the first part of our coverage on the plight of refugees in the Sinai

The Sawarka Bedouin tribe, one of the largest in the Sinai, was named by one Bedouin source as being involved in organ thefts.

A Sawarka leader said he was aware that people trafficking was going on in Sinai and that in some cases refugees were held in bonded labor and tortured. But he added only rogue elements of his tribe were involved.

According to rights groups, refugees — from places like Ethiopia, Eritrea or Sudan — are enslaved and tortured and the women raped if they cannot come up with the large sums of money the Bedouin try to extort from them and their families to smuggle them into Israel.

Among Bedouin leaders in the Sinai, no one was willing to speak openly about the organ theft. Tribal leaders said they knew nothing about it or had only heard rumors.

But Hamdy Al-Azazy, head of New Generation Foundation, has photos showing corpses with distinctive scars in the abdominal area. All the photos were taken in a morgue in the Egyptian port town of El Arish after the bodies were brought there.

Al-Azazy says the organs are taken from refugees while they are still alive. “The organs are not useful if they’re dead. They drug them first and remove their organs, then leave them to die and dump them in a deep dry well along with hundreds of bodies.”

He says he was once taken to the area where the bodies are dumped after the organ removal process. He says he believes corrupt Egyptian doctors are working with the Bedouins, coming to Sinai with mobile hospital units to perform the operations to remove especially corneas, livers and kidneys.

“Mobile clinics using advanced technology come from a private hospital in Cairo to an area in the deserts of Mid-Sinai and conduct physicals on the Africans before they choose those suitable, then they conduct the operation,” Al-Azazy said.

CNN showed some of the photos of the dead to Dr. Fakhry Saleh, the former head of Cairo’s forensic department and an expert on the illegal organ trade.

“There are two kinds of scars. One is from a postmortem autopsy and one from surgery,” Saleh said, pointing to a scar that he says came from an operation that must have been performed shortly before the person died.

According to Saleh, the operation was conducted no more than 48 hours before death, indicated by the freshness of the scars.

Furthermore, all the scars are in the area of the liver and kidney. “They are good stitches in the area of the liver and the kidney,” Saleh said while examining the photos on a laptop. While Saleh says he has never heard of organ theft involving African refugees, he says it seems highly probable that the scars on the bodies come from organ removal.

“They could open you up, take it out and just let you die. The mafia does not care whether you live or die. When they cut you open, it would be very painful, so they would give you anesthesia,” Saleh later said.

Saleh has done extensive research on the illegal organ business in Egypt, which preys on poor people. The World Health Organization in a recent report called Egypt a regional hub for the trade.

An investigation headed by Saleh found illegal organ trafficking to be one of the most profitable criminal activities.

“Organ trade is the second most profitable trade behind only weapons trade,” he said. “It brings in more money than drug dealing and prostitution.”

One Bedouin tribal chief did put CNN in touch with a Bedouin who used to be involved in people smuggling and who was close to the organ theft scheme. The source spoke on condition of anonymity but offered insights into the scheme.

“The doctors deal directly with the Sawarka family, and they buy the organs starting from $20,000,” the source said in a phone interview.

He offered further details of the logistics required to keep the organs fresh for the transplant into their new owners’ bodies: “The doctors come with some sort of mobile fridge where the organs can be stored for six to eight hours and resold in Cairo or elsewhere.”

The source claimed doctors from Cairo are involved in the organ theft, a claim that has proved impossible to verify.

“It’s like spare parts for cars,” the Bedouin, who later agreed to meet one member of the CNN crew in person, said sarcastically toward the end of the interview.

A second Bedouin, who also refused to be identified, later gave a similar account.

The police general in charge of security in Northern Sinai tells CNN that his forces are aware that organ trafficking and theft are going on in their area of operations but that the authorities have not identified who is behind the schemes.

 رابط ذا صلة :

سيناء : جرح مفتوح إسمه المهاجرين الأفارقة

 

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