NAIROBI, KENYA – Sixty-five illegal migrants from southern Ethiopia were seized by police in a container on a Mombasa-bound truck on Monday evening.
One said they paid Sh15.6 million to agents who promised to help them look for jobs in South Africa, via Kenya.
Each paid Ethiopian Birr 24,000, raising questions as to why people who could afford Sh240,000 would be desperate for jobs in South Africa.
Their spokesperson Mesfin Markos, 25, praised the police, saying: “It was dark inside, with no ventilation and no space to move.
We gasped for air, the weak ones fainted. It was then that we started knocking on the container to be freed. We were dying.”
On Tuesday, 33 were taken to a Machakos court in the afternoon and pleaded guilty to being in Kenya illegally.
An Ethiopian conversant with Amharic was brought to help the suspects enter a plea. They appeared before the principal magistrate Julie Oseko, where the court heard their visas had expired.
An Immigration officer confirmed 28 suspects had valid travel documents. Four others who had no travel papers were also charged.
Ms Oseko fined the 33 of them Sh5,000 each or serve three months in jail, then directed that they be repartriated to Ethiopia after paying the fines or completing the jail terms.
Earlier, anti-terrorrrist detectives on Tuesday interrogating the suspects at the Machakos police station.
The arrest exposed what appears a larger syndicate. “Their passports, all stamped at Moyale, showed they entered Kenya between October 3 and 8,” said district police boss Lumumba. They have been in Nairobi as they awaited transport to Mombasa.