Tewelde Goitom
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tewelde Goitom, or Walid or Welid, (born c. 1984)[1] is an Eritrean human trafficker and smuggler.[2][3]
Between 2014 and 2018, he was "at the heart of a particularly brutal and lucrative trade in desperate migrants trying to reach Europe"[4] and boasted that he moved "15,000 people across the sea to Europe in 2015 alone".[2]
He was arrested in March 2020,[5] tried and in 2021 found guilty and sentencted to 18 years in prison in Ethiopia.[6] Eritrean journalist Meron Estefanos predicted that he would be able to bribe his guards and escape like ringleader Kidane Zekarias Habtemariam, who had escaped detention in mid-February 2021.[7]
In 2022, Ethiopia extradited Tewelde Goitom to the Netherlands and on January 10, 2023, he appeared at a pretrial hearing in the Dutch town of Zwolle, where he claimed he was a victim of mistaken identity. The prosecution wanted to join his case with that of Kidane Zekarias Habtemariam, who had been arrested again January 1, 2023 in Khartoum, Sudan.[8][9]
