500 Rescued, 40 Arrested in Interpol-Led Human Trafficking Bust in Africa

By Brooks Hays 

UPI -- Some 500 victims, including 236 minors, have been rescued in a human-trafficking bust led by Interpol in Africa.

The mission was carried out over five days simultaneously in Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal. Police arrested 40 suspected traffickers.

"In addition to arrests, this operation has opened a number of ongoing investigations to further disrupt the crime networks involved in trafficking in human beings, emphasizing the effectiveness of such operations via [Interpol's] international network," Yoro Traore, police inspector with the Interpol National Central Bureau in Bamako, Mali, said in a news release.

The mission was dubbed Operation Epervier and was organized under the Sahel Project, an initiative investigating organized crime in the Sahel region of northwest Africa. The German Foreign Office funded the initiative.

Traffickers arrested during this month's operation are accused of forcing humans into labor. Some victims were forced to beg on the streets, while others were forced into prostitution.

One 15-year-old female was intercepted by police before traffickers could sell her into forced labor. The teenager was found with just a trash bag full of her possessions.

Another 16-year-old female was promised paid work to support her family, but was forced into prostitution.

"The results of this operation underline the challenge faced by law enforcement and all stakeholders in addressing human trafficking in the Sahel region," said Innocentia Apovo, criminal intelligence officer with Interpol's Trafficking in Human Beings Unit.

European and African authorities have been working to ramp up coordinate investigations of human trafficking and other forms of organized crime.

Early this month, France called on the U.N. Security Council to hold an emergency meeting to address allegations of slave markets operating in Libya.

The advocacy group Human Rights First estimates that there are 24.9 million victims trapped in the modern slave trade. The majority of these victims are forced into labor or the sex trade.

Boko Haram Takes Their Insanity to Niger, Chad and Cameroon

Female suicide bombers kill 5 in north Cameroon

No group claims responsibility, but attacks are in line with others launched by Boko Haram

The Associated Press

Two dozen people were killed in Kano, northern Nigeria, in February when a pair of teenaged suicide bombers suspected to from Boko Haram set off blasts at two bus stations. Saturday's bombings in neighbouring Cameroon were perpetrated by at least one teen, and are also believed to have been the work of Boko Haram. (EPA)

Two female suspected Boko Haram militants detonated a pair of suicide bombs in a village in northern Cameroon on Saturday, killing at least five people, security sources and an official said.

Col. Jacob Kodji said a teenager set off explosives in a local shop, killing two people, and the other attacker targeted a family.

One wonders what kind of evil Boko Haram had to inflict on these girls to force them to murder/suicide? 

The attacks occurred in the town of Dabanga near Cameroon's northern border with Nigeria. Kodji said the suicide bombers were Nigerians who came to Cameroon as refugees.

"The provisional toll is seven dead, including the two suicide bombers, as well as two soldiers injured," a senior government source told Reuters, requesting anonymity.

Kodji said 12 others were injured and are receiving treatment at a military camp in Mora.

Dabanga, Cameroon, map

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they are in line with others launched by Nigeria's Boko Haram extremists.

This year Boko Haram has expanded attacks into Cameroon, Chad and Niger — all countries contributing troops to a regional force intended to wipe out the extremists.

Centred in northeast Nigeria, Boko Haram is a radical Sunni Muslim group that wants to create an Islamic caliphate and impose its version of strict Sharia law and is hostile to those following the Shiite branch of the religion.

On Friday, a suspected Boko Haram suicide bomber detonated himself in the middle of a procession of hundreds of Shiite Muslims in Nigeria's second-largest city, killing 21 people and injuring dozens.

Boko Haram's Child Victims Learn to Smile Again at Niger Camp

By Boureima Hama
AFP 

Children at a refugee camp in southeast Niger

ASSAGA (Niger) (AFP) - In a shed at the heart of the Assaga refugee camp in southeast Niger, around 50 children sing and dance, masking the deep emotional trauma inflicted on them by Boko Haram.

Nearby, little girls who fled the brutal Islamists in neighbouring Nigeria huddle around jigsaw puzzles, while barefoot young boys in ragged clothes or shirtless play football and table tennis.

The camp has no school, but staff from UN agencies and specialised charities do their best to help the youngsters, who make up the majority of the around 6,000 refugees here who were routed from their villages by Boko Haram.

Special help is being provided by psychologists to 1,011 of the children, seen as among the most vulnerable victims of the violence, to adapt to a new life, often in the wake of terrible events.

"Many children were witnesses or the direct victims of atrocities by Boko Haram," says Adama Cossimbo, head of the psychological help centre financed by the Italian non-governmental organisation COOPI.

"Boko Haram forced some children to watch their mothers or sisters being raped," a UN relief worker says. "Others saw their father or their brother having his throat slit."

Children stand next to a UNICEF tent at a refugee camp

The trauma was so severe for some that when they first arrived in Assaga, they would not eat or speak, he adds.

- 'On the right path' -

According to COOPI, many of the children show signs of mental illness.

"We're developing games and activities to strengthen their resilience after the trauma they've endured," says Cossimbo, who works with a psychologist and teachers.

Along with sports and games, relief workers give puzzles and memory quizzes to the children cared for at the centre.

Psychologists say many children were witnesses or the direct victims of
atrocities by Boko Haram (AFP)

Two months on, Cossimbo is optimistic. "They sing and seem to be their old cheerful selves... We're on the right path towards their 'reconstruction'," he claims with pride.

Nine-year-old Ali lost part of his family in a Boko Haram raid and has said nothing for days on end, but he manages to whisper: "I escaped from Boko Haram and I feel good here."

For Ali's father, wealthy bell pepper grower Elhadj Gremah, forced exile is sheer "humiliation".

"In the village, my children had all they needed to eat. Here they don't go to school and they sometimes sleep on empty stomachs," he complains.

At Assaga, huts supported with tree branches compete with standard-issue tents provided by the United Nations. First created by UN staff three months ago, the camp looks like a shantytown.

Children sing and dance in a refugee camp in Assaga, Niger

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimates that some 1.4 million children have fled Islamist attacks in Nigeria and neighbouring Niger, Cameroon and Chad in the past five months.

These regional nations have joined forces against Boko Haram as the Islamists have launched bloody cross-border raids.

"The flow of refugees and the lack of resources seriously compromises our ability to provide vital aid on the ground," the UN agency recently reported.

During a visit to the Diffa zone in mid-September, Toby Lanzer, the UN regional humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel, remarked on the "very severe security crisis" at Assaga.

"The situation here is atrocious," he added. "People are traumatised."

Diffa has for three years been confronted with food shortages because of successive periods of drought and floods. The arrival of about 150,000 refugees since 2013 has worsened the situation for local poor people.

"We have to act right now to save lives," insists Rotimy Djossaya, the local chief of the American NGO CARE. The authorities warn that Niger, a deeply poor country, could face another food crisis in 2016 because of a poor harvest.