Ethiopian law enforcement officials have announced a major breakthrough in the fight against cross-border human trafficking, with the arrest of 17 suspects believed to be part of a multi-million-dollar criminal ring responsible for dozens of migrant deaths and widespread abuse. The operation, which unfolded over 15 days targeting locations in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa and the eastern city of Harar, netted the alleged ringleader Mohammed Tahir, who is also known by the alias “Wordi”.
According to Ethiopian Federal Police, the criminal network stands accused of a string of heinous crimes that date back years, including the deaths of at least 60 migrants, sexual abuse of multiple female trafficking victims, and systematic torture of Ethiopian migrants held in facilities in Yemen. Authorities estimate the gang illegally extracted more than 1 billion Ethiopian birr, equivalent to approximately $6.1 million, from vulnerable migrants and their families over the course of their operations. As of the latest update, neither Tahir nor any of his co-accused have appeared before a court to enter pleas or issued any public response to the allegations brought against them.
On Tuesday, law enforcement published photographs of all 17 suspects to their official Facebook page, as part of their public confirmation of the arrests. Court documents and police statements outline that the gang’s trafficking route moved thousands of Ethiopian migrants from the country through Djibouti and Yemen, before ultimately delivering them to Saudi Arabia. In total, investigators allege the network facilitated the irregular movement of more than 40,000 Ethiopian migrants through this route.
The criminal group operated out of unregulated detention warehouses in Yemen, a country that has been decimated by years of civil war, leaving a power vacuum with virtually no functional rule of law. Yemen is currently classified as facing one of the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian crises by global human rights watchdog Human Rights Watch, a context that the traffickers exploited to carry out their abuse undetected. In one of the most disturbing details of the case, police confirmed that gang members recorded videos of torture inflicted on detained migrants, sending the footage to the victims’ families back in Ethiopia to extort additional ransom payments.
After concluding the 15-day arrest operation, investigators have finalized the case file and submitted it to Ethiopia’s Ministry of Justice for prosecution. The evidence package supporting the charges includes witness testimony collected from survivors located in both Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia, along with documentary evidence linking the suspects to the network’s operations. Both the Ethiopian Federal Police and the Ministry of Justice have declined repeated requests from the BBC for additional context on the operation, including details of how the suspects have pleaded to the charges.
This high-profile arrest is part of a broader, intensified crackdown on human trafficking networks launched by the Ethiopian government in recent months. Just three months prior, in April, police announced the arrest of a separate trafficking ring accused of luring thousands of Ethiopian migrants with false promises of passage to Europe via Libya. According to police spokesperson Jeylan Abdi, who first shared details of the latest arrest with BBC News Amharic, that previous case is now progressing through the national court system.
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