The Cairo-based team of investigative reporter Maggie Michael, photographer Nariman El-Mofty and video journalist Maad al-Zikry for bringing to light, with dramatic words and images, the largely unseen story of Ethiopians trying to reach jobs in Saudi Arabia who instead are systematically imprisoned, tortured, raped and starved by traffickers in a remote village on Yemen’s coast. The team brought the victims to life by reaching the site and finding migrants who had escaped only hours earlier, their wounds still fresh; one man died of starvation just hours after the AP saw him.
Ethiopian migrants line up to board a small boat on the uninhabited coast outside the town of Obock, Djibouti, the shore closest to Yemen, July 15, 2019. More than 100 Ethiopian men and women, boys and girls were ordered to sit in total silence. Only the smugglers spoke, in hushed conversations on satellite phones to their counterparts in Yemen on the other side of the sea.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
A hosh owned by smugglers, where migrants stay after their arrival, in Lahj, Yemen, July 25, 2019.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Ethiopian migrants sit in the back of a pickup truck to be taken to desert compounds known in Arabic as “hosh,” in Ras al-Ara, Lahj, Yemen, July 24, 2019. The AP spoke to more than two dozen Ethiopians who survived torture at Ras al-Ara. Nearly all of them reported witnessing deaths, and one man died of starvation hours after the AP saw him.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Smugglers move migrants on a pick up truck to a hosh in Lahj, Yemen, July 23, 2019.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
An Ethiopian migrant, 17, a victim of rape, prays in Basateen, a district of Aden, Yemen, July 20, 2019. She says she had been raped more times than she can count. The first time was during the boat crossing from Djibouti, packed in with more than 150 other migrants. Fearing the smugglers, no one dared raise a word of protest as the captain and his crew raped her and the other nine women on board during the eight-hour journey.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Ethiopian migrant Zahra, 20, a rape victim, adjusts her veil for a photograph, in Basateen, a district of Aden, Yemen, July 20, 2019. She was imprisoned for a month in a tin-roofed hut, broiling and hungry, ordered to call home each day to beseech her family to wire $2,000. She said she did not have family to ask for money and pleaded for her freedom. Instead, her captors raped her.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Ethiopian migrant Mohammed Hussein, 19, who is severely malnourished from imprisonment by smugglers, stands on a scale at the Ras al-Ara Hospital in Lahj, Yemen, Aug. 1, 2019. He weighed 31 kilograms (68 pounds). Starvation is a torture used by the traffickers to wear down their victims.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
A road sign leads to the coastal village of Ras al-Ara, Lahj, Yemen. With its systematic torture, Ras al-Ara is a particular hell on the arduous, 900-mile (1,400 kilometer) journey from the Horn of Africa to oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
A road in Lahi, Yemen, early in the morning, July 23, 2019. More than 150,000 migrants landed in Yemen in 2018, a 50% increase from the year before, according to the International Organization for Migration. Many were trying to reach Saudi Arabia, but faced extreme abuse at the hands of traffickers in Yemen.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
An Ethiopian Tigray migrant, who was imprisoned by traffickers for months, lies on a gurney accompanied by a nurse at the Ras al-Ara Hospital in Lahj, Yemen,. Aug. 1, 2019. Nurses gave him fluids but he died several hours later.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Ethiopian migrant Ibrahim Bakalah Hassan, 24, shows scars from torture in a hosh in Lahj, Yemen, July 25, 2019. He says his arms were tied behind his back, and wants to go back to Ethiopia.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Ethiopian migrants, who were imprisoned by traffickers for months, eat rice from a bowl on the floor at the Ras al-Ara Hospital in Lahj, Yemen, Aug. 1, 2019. They said they were fed once a day with scraps of bread and a sip of water when they were held.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Ethiopian migrant Abdul-Rahman Taha, 17, shows his amputated leg at his home, in Basateen, a district of Aden, Yemen, July 20, 2019. When he landed in Ras al-Ara, traffickers took him and 50 other migrants to a holding cell, demanding phone numbers. Taha couldn't ask his father for more money so he told them he didn't have a phone number. One night, a captor beat his right leg with a steel rod. Taha passed out and was dumped in the desert with three dead migrants by traffickers.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
The graves of Ethiopian migrants buried in Lahj, Yemen, July 23, 2019.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Ethiopian migrants walk in a sandstorm on a road, in Lahj, Yemen, July 23, 2019.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty