First migrants released from Saudi detention centres arrive home after Telegraph investigation

Reports revealed how thousands of Ethiopian migrants were kept in shocking conditions in Saudi detention centres

Migrants arrive in Ethiopia after months being held in detention camps
Migrants arrive in Ethiopia after months being held in detention camps Credit: Telegraph

Almost a year after they were arrested and locked up in slave-camp like conditions in Saudi Arabia, tens of thousands of migrants will be repatriated to Ethiopia after a series of Telegraph investigations exposed the appalling conditions. 

On Tuesday evening, the first group of 296 detainees was flown home to Addis Ababa. Photos published by Ethiopian state media show their joyous, exhausted faces as they marched off the plane. 

“It’s as though our prayers are answered,” said 23-year-old Aynalem*, who has been locked up at the Al Shumaisi detention centre near the holy city of Mecca since April. “I haven’t been outside in eight months. I feared I would only leave this place in a body bag.”

According to Ethiopian officials and state media, the country will now begin repatriating a thousand migrants each week from the centres.  It is unclear what has prompted the move but international pressure has been mounting on both the Ethiopian and Saudi governments. 

Last August, The Telegraph found that 10s of thousands of Ethiopian migrants had been rounded up and kept for months on end in sunless rooms and forced to sleep and eat in their own faeces as part of a Saudi policy to limit the spread of coronavirus. 

Migrants in several centres spread out across the oil-rich kingdom told the paper that they had been regularly beaten, tortured, starved of food and water and that some young men had died of disease and dehydration in the Arabian heat.  

Using phones smuggled into the prisons migrants sent shocking photos and videos of their appalling living conditions to the newspaper on encrypted channels. The images of hundreds of emaciated young men, some of them with injuries from Saudi prison guards’ beatings, provoked global condemnation.

Shockingly, The Telegraph found that Ethiopian diplomats in Saudi Arabia tried to cover up their fellow citizens’ plight, most probably to avoid a damaging diplomatic fall out with a major investor. 

The harrowing accounts of suicide, disease and torture led to an investigation by the United Nations chief. The accounts were confirmed by rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. 

The overwhelming weight of evidence eventually led to a vote of condemnation against Saudi Arabia in the EU Parliament. But despite the global outrage, accounts of starvation and brutal killings by prison guards have continued to emerge over the last few months as authorities conducted mass sweeps of the prisons to find inmates to find smuggled mobile phones. 

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The 296 migrants who arrived home on Tuesday are from Al Shumaisi, which holds at least 16,000 Ethiopian migrants. There are multiple other centres in Saudi Arabia holding Ethiopian migrants from many other African countries such as Nigeria, Somalia and Kenya. 

“Overall, there are roughly 40,000 Ethiopian migrants ready to go back home,” Nebiyu Tedla, Ethiopia’s Deputy Consul General in Jeddah told The Telegraph.   

“For now it will be 1,000 returnees per week,” Mr Nebiyu said. “But hopefully, we will be given the green light to increase the numbers.” 

According to Ethiopia’s Deputy Consul Nebiyu Tedla, inmates held at the Jazan detention centre near the Yemen border would also be flown home. Jazan is notorious among inmates for its extremely violent guards and a higher chance of death. 

The Telegraph managed to reach Aynalem on Tuesday with a phone that the prison guards had not spotted because the young man had hidden it in the toilet. 

“On Saturday, someone from the [Ethiopian] Embassy came to see us,” he said. “He told us to prepare to go home and that our suffering would end soon.”

*Name has been changed to protect his identity   

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