The United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced on Thursday the arrest in Sudan of the “most wanted human trafficker” in the world as part of an international police operation jointly with Interpol, reports AFP.

The UAE Ministry of Interior and Interpol said Kidane Zecarias Habtemariam, who was hit by two Interpol red alerts, was the head of a criminal network that kidnapped and defrauded hundreds of migrants from East Africa who wanted to reach Europe.

The man, an Eritrean citizen, was arrested in Ethiopia in 2020, but escaped from prison a year later and was sentenced to life in prison in absentia, the same joint statement said, Agerpres writes with reference to AFP.

With the support of Interpol, the United Arab Emirates launched an investigation into Habtemariam’s network and the illegal financial transactions carried out by his brother.

“We put an end to one of the most important axes of human trafficking to Europe”

Investigators managed to locate the trafficker in Sudan, where he was detained on January 1 by local police in cooperation with the Emirates authorities, said a senior official of the Ministry of Interior, Said Abdullah Al-Suwaidi, at a press conference.

• “The most wanted human trafficker in the world will no longer be able to carry out his shameful actions.
• We have put an end to one of the most important routes of human trafficking to Europe, which affects thousands of migrants arriving from Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan via Libya to Europe,” the official was quoted as saying.

Stephen Kavanagh, Interpol’s director of police services, confirmed that the trafficker was the “most wanted criminal” in the Netherlands, Ethiopia and several other countries. Authorities in the UAE, Ethiopia, the Netherlands and Sudan played a “crucial role” in the investigation, he said in a statement.

Habtemariam’s arrest “is proof of the strength of the Interpol network and what can be achieved when states work together,” he stressed.