Popular tourist hotspot makes big change to travel advice
British tourists planning to visit Morocco have been warned by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office about the risks of carrying drugs in and out of the country, including Class B drug cannabis.
The North African country has severe penalties for tourists caught carrying illegal substances while transiting through Moroccan airports, with heavy fines and long jail sentences handed out.
The new Government travel advice issued yesterday says drug-detecting technology has been ramped up in recent years in the country.
Its advice now reads: 'Illegal drugs, including cannabis, carry severe penalties. You should expect a long jail sentence and heavy fines for possessing, using or smuggling illegal drugs, including when transiting through the airport.
'Airports in Morocco have excellent technology and security for detecting illegal items. This is also used to scan the baggage of transiting passengers.'
Tourism in Morocco continues to grow year-on-year, with around a million visitors descending on cities including Marrakech, Casablanca and coastal resorts including Essaouira and Agadir.
The update comes just a day after a British mother was charged with trafficking drugs into Germany after being caught allegedly smuggling cannabis from Thailand.
Cameron Bradford, 21, from Knebworth in Hertfordshire, was arrested at Munich Airport on April 22nd when she attempted to collect her luggage.
Authorities had become suspicious after she allegedly changed her flight at the last minute, having originally been due to fly to London Heathrow via Singapore.
Her family had filed a missing person report after raising concerns when she did not return home as expected, but then learned the next day she was in Germany.
Miss Bradford was arrested and held in custody - and has now been charged with attempted transit of cannabis and abetting the international trafficking of cannabis.
The mother, who has a young son, is set to make an appearance at a hearing in Munich District Court on August 6 as authorities continue to investigate.
A Foreign Office spokesman said today: 'We are supporting a British woman who is detained in Germany and are in contact with her family and the local authorities.'
Miss Bradford's arrest is one of a series of cases involving suspected young British female drug mules stopped by police at airports in countries around the world.
This week, another British woman was arrested in Mauritius accused of trying to smuggle cannabis inside her six-year-old son's suitcase.
This week, Natashia Artug, 35, of Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, was detained alongside seven other people accused of carrying more than 161kg of the drug - worth £1.6million - in their luggage.
The boy's luggage alone is said to have had 24 packages of drugs wrapped in clear cellophane inside weighing 14kg.
Campaign group Justice Abroad claimed Ms Artug is 'vulnerable' and was coerced into travelling to Mauritius by people involved in the drug trade who threatened her and her family, adding that she did not know the bags contained cannabis.
Miss Artug's partner Florian Lisman, a 38-year-old Romanian, was also arrested and said to be carrying 32 drug packages, an iPhone and £260.
The other Britons detained were Patrick Lee Wilsdon, 22, Lily Watson, 20, Shannon Ellen Josie Holness 29, Laura Amy Kappen 28, and Shona Campbell, 32, who each had between 30 and 32 packages, according to local newspaper Le Mauricien.
They were all on the same British Airways flight from London Gatwick to Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam airport last month. The suspects have all been charged with drug trafficking and remain in custody.
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The Sun
7 hours ago
- The Sun
My kind uncle was murdered by cannabis-crazed mum… as experts warn Class B drug is fuelling wave of psychotic killers
WHEN pensioner Roger Leadbeater was brutally murdered in cold blood while out walking his dog in a Sheffield park, his distraught family were completely at a loss. "As a family, we can barely believe such a kind, gentle soul could be taken in such a way,' they said in a statement, highlighting how the 74-year-old's faithful springer spaniel refused to leave his side while he lay dying that fateful evening in August 2023. 17 17 17 It later emerged the woman charged with killing him, then 32-year-old schizophrenic Emma Borowy, was a habitual cannabis user who, when not being treated in a mental health hospital, would sacrifice feeding herself to pay for the drug. Mother-of-one Borowy, who died in a suspected suicide in prison in December 2023, had absconded from Royal Bolton Hospital eight times since she was sectioned in October 2022, and each time she escaped she would buy weed and display increasingly concerning psychotic behaviour. 'As far as I could see she was never reprimanded at all for having cannabis despite having it every time she left and even having it on hospital grounds,' Roger's grieving niece, Angela Hector, 56, told The Sun. 'I am now so scared of what cannabis can do. This has had a massive impact on us as a family. We have lost somebody really important to us.' In May this year, London Mayor Sadiq Khan backed a call for the partial decriminalisation of possession of the Class B drug in a recent report by the London Drugs Commission. It suggested doing so could free up law enforcement and court resources, as individuals caught with small amounts might face warnings, fines or community service, and eventually pave the way towards a regulated cannabis market. But the suggestion set alarm bells ringing for Roger's family - and the Police and Crime Commissioner for Dorset, David Sidwick. He wrote a letter to police minister Dame Diana Johnson which was signed by 13 other PCCs, claiming the effect of the drug in society may, in actual fact, be 'far worse' than heroin, and it should be upgraded to Class A - a belief shared by the former Home Secretary Suella Braverman. Mr Sidwick said: 'It is a chronically dangerous drug that we haven't gripped. The whole world has been subjected to a PR campaign in the other direction. 'I worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 30 years and this drug has long-term chronic side effects. 'It is associated with more birth defects than thalidomide and is linked to more than 20 cancers. Not to mention the issues with psychosis and drug driving.' Mr Sidwick's concerns are echoed by the findings of a Sun probe which reveals cannabis is behind a mental health epidemic that has seen a third of people presenting with psychosis in London developing it from heavy use of high strength weed. The THC levels - the mind-altering element in weed - nowadays is almost seven times stronger than it was 35 years ago, shooting up from three per cent to 15-20 per cent in potent modern-day cultivated cannabis. The increase has a frightening effect on the addictiveness of the substance, making users, particularly teenagers with developing brains, vulnerable to mental health issues with prolonged heavy use, which can progress to violent disorders - sometimes with deadly consequences. 'Epidemic' 17 17 Psychiatrist professor Sir Robin Murray, who specialises in psychosis at King's College, London, told The Sun: 'To the parents in their 40s and 50s who see their children smoking cannabis, they need to be aware that it is a very different substance to what it was years ago. 'The result is that it's far more addictive. We're seeing smokers having up to 20 joints a day. 'We are at the beginnings of an epidemic of cannabis-induced psychosis. 'About a third of the people in London who present with psychosis have developed it from heavy use of high potency cannabis. 'The mental health service is a right mess. One of the reasons for that is that we've got more people who are psychotic than we're expected to have. 'Half of those people with cannabis induced psychosis will develop schizophrenia in five years. 'But it is not schizophrenia that makes you violent, it's cannabis that makes you violent. 'Cannabis makes you paranoid, so if you're hearing voices from God commanding you to do something, then you're seeing violence in a bizarre and horrifying murder that is not like plotting to kill your wife in six weeks time, but a sudden psychotic episode where you kill whoever you come across.' The effects of this were seen on June 27, when Marcus Arduini-Monzo, 37, was jailed for life after he murdered 14-year-old Daniel Anjorin with a samurai sword as he walked to school in a 20-minute rampage in East London. The appalling attack was blamed on Arduini-Monzo's cannabis misuse. Links to violence 17 17 17 Cannabis is currently a Class B drug, along with ketamine and amphetamines. It was returned to Class B after being downgraded to Class C by Labour between 2004 and 2009. English teacher Ross Grainger runs a blog cataloguing cannabis-related violent crimes called Attacker Smoked Cannabis, and has written a book of the same name - inspired by the phrase he uses when searching for incidents. He told The Sun: 'I started this in 2017 when I was worried we could be going in the direction of decriminalisation and I realised there was a problem. 'I'd say there has been a steady violent episode every two weeks for the past 30 years - and what I log is the tip of the iceberg. 'I log murders, suicides, rapes, drug driving and terrorism. 'I was struck by how it is considered a peaceful drug that couldn't in any way lead to violence, yet the evidence I read as I began researching showed how strongly that is not the case, and how strongly it is linked to terrible violence. I'd say there has been a steady violent episode every two weeks for the past 30 years - and what I log is the tip of the iceberg... For me, there is no drug worse than cannabis Ross Grainger 'I see the same pattern emerging where a young person has cannabis from a young age, loses their mind and commits a terrible act of ultraviolence. 'You'd be forgiven for thinking it is legal in this country. Really it is decriminalised in all but name. 'For me, there is no drug worse than cannabis. Other drugs have horrendous side-effects, but what can be worse than actually losing your mind? 'It seems crazy to me that a Government can be so anti-smoking, and do so well in enforcing a ban, but then be so lax at enforcing cannabis legislation.' 'Cannabis took my son' 17 17 17 Heartbroken mum, Julie Romani, 60, from Bradford, West Yorks., knows only too well the harmful effects cannabis addiction can have after her son Jordan took his own life in September 2017, aged 27. He'd started smoking cannabis as a young teenager and couldn't function without it. The widowed property developer and mum-of-two, whose husband died aged 61 in 2011, when Jordan was 21, said: 'My husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer when Jordan was 14, so I think that's when he started to develop a habit. 'We didn't know what was going on. We put mood swings down to him being a teenager, but the emotional instability, nastiness and anger continued and got worse over the years. 'He was depressed and ended up where he couldn't get a grip on reality. He used to say the only thing that made him happy was his 'Happy Baccy'. 'He tried so hard to quit and had even stopped smoking it for three months before he died, but he couldn't cope with it and couldn't cope without it. 'Jordan had everything to live for but the cannabis took him.' After Jordan's death Julie set up a charity, Help For Dependency, and now raises awareness of the dangers of cannabis to mental health. 'Chicken and egg' situation 17 17 Investigative journalist Julian Hendy founded the charity Hundred Families after his father Philip, 75, was killed by mentally ill Stephen Newton in a drug-induced psychosis in 2007. Newton lay in wait for Philip to emerge from buying a newspaper before fatally stabbing him in the street in Bristol. Julian's charity has now backed over 300 families who have lost loved ones at the hands of mentally ill patients, many of whom were under the influence of cannabis. He said: 'Cannabis and serious mental health problems are very common to go together. Around 70 per cent of those with serious mental illness also abuse drugs. 'It is sometimes difficult to know which caused the other in a chicken and egg situation. 'There's a lot that needs to be done in treating mental illness and stopping patients from being involved in drugs that can cause schizophrenia and make mental illness worse. 'In the case of my dad, the services knew this chap took drugs and they didn't do anything to stop him taking these drugs. Jordan tried so hard to quit and had even stopped smoking it for three months before he died, but he couldn't cope with it and couldn't cope without it. Jordan had everything to live for but the cannabis took him Julie Romani 'The death of my dad was very preventable. They should have done better to save my dad, they didn't do so, and I see that in lots of cases. 'My father's killer got a murder conviction, which you don't always get. It was found that he had made the dangerous choice of taking drugs that caused him to become psychotic and murder and therefore he was held responsible and jailed for 16 years in October 2008. 'Yet in the case of Valdo Calocane, who committed the Nottingham murders of 19-year-old university students Grace O'Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber, and caretaker Ian Coates, 65, he was not tested for drugs, and was convicted on the grounds of diminished responsibility. 'Then you get shorter sentences in hospital which doesn't feel like justice for the families. 'He should have been tested for drugs at the time of his arrest and he wasn't. 'Right now people who present with problems due to cannabis will not be helped because cannabis is the cause, unless they have psychosis, and only then they sometimes get the help. 'Mental health services seem to be aware this is a common problem but they don't actually take enough effective steps to try to stop people becoming psychotic.' 17 17 Crazed cannabis killers JAKE NOTMAN Jake Notman, 28, was jailed for eight years and eight months after admitting to killing his girlfriend, Lauren Bloomer, during a psychotic episode triggered by a cannabis brownie. In November 2020, Notman stabbed Bloomer more than 30 times and ran her over outside their Tamworth home. Bloomer, 25, had begun recording on her phone after seeking help online for Notman's bad reaction to the drug. The audio recorded her screams and Notman's chilling words before the sound of a revving engine and a thud. Neighbours saw him run over her and return indoors without offering help. Notman later called 999, saying he'd been told he killed his girlfriend. Prosecutors initially charged him with murder, but psychiatric experts concluded he couldn't distinguish reality at the time. The court accepted his manslaughter plea. The judge said the killing was 'unexpected and frightful,' partly caused by the drug. PIETRO ADDIS Pietro Addis, 19, was jailed for 15 years in May 2023 after fatally stabbing his grandmother, Sue Addis, at her home in Withdean, East Sussex, in January 2021. Though he admitted the killing, a jury accepted his plea of diminished responsibility due to a psychotic episode, finding him guilty of manslaughter. Addis, diagnosed with ADHD in 2018, had been living with his grandmother but tensions rose over his cannabis use. At the time of the attack, Brighton restaurateur Sue was seeking professional help for him. On the day of the incident, Addis called 999, and police discovered Sue in the bath with 17 stab wounds. Judge Christine Laing KC stated that despite his mental condition, Addis bore significant responsibility. He must serve at least 10 years in custody and five on licence. DANIEL O'HARA WRIGHT Daniel O'Hara Wright, 24, was found not guilty of murdering his mum, Carole Wright, by reason of insanity after a harrowing trial at Oxford Crown Court. Suffering a severe psychotic episode, he believed his mother had become a demon and killed her and gouged out her eyes during a walk at Watlington Hill on October 23, 2020. The day of the killing, he woke up between 10am and 11am and smoked a small amount of cannabis 'through a hollowed out potato'. Witnesses saw him behaving erratically afterward, including biting off a chicken's head, climbing a pylon, and telling strangers he'd "fallen from the sky". Experts agreed he was deeply psychotic, with delusions of being a god or shaman. Psychiatric evidence confirmed he did not understand his actions were wrong. The jury, after over two hours of deliberation, accepted the insanity defence. Wright's deteriorating mental health had been evident for years prior to the killing. Angela, a community service officer and mum-of-five, is still fighting for answers, furious that her uncle's killer was reportedly never reprimanded for her cannabis use, despite allegedly having it on hospital grounds. 'Despite evidence showing the detrimental impact it has on mental health, I cannot see any evidence that anything is done to help mental health patients stop taking it,' she said. 'Borowy was refusing to take her own anti-psychotic medication and self-medicating instead, with disastrous consequences.' Borowy was sectioned in October 2022 for sacrificing two goats she stole from a farm in a witchcraft ceremony. One time she escaped she told police she would murder hundreds of people and had threatened a 'bloodbath'. She was also often found with knives. Tragically, after being granted supervised leave on August 7, Borowy ran off from the healthcare worker accompanying her and travelled to Sheffield where she killed Roger Leadbeater two days later. Angela is now incredibly wary of being around anyone she suspects is using cannabis. 'I went to a 90s festival just last month and I had to leave because the smell of cannabis in the air was too much for me,' she said. 'I didn't feel safe and I was scared of what it could do to the people smoking it. They could be a walking timebomb. 'I know what happened to Roger is rare, but he is proof that it can happen - and the reality is that cannabis is not rare. 'The problem with a murder caused by cannabis is that they are so tied up with mental health that the cannabis side of it gets forgotten. More needs to be done about prevention. 'Sadiq Khan needs to take a walk in our shoes for a week to see what he thinks of cannabis use then.' A spokesperson from the Home Office said: "We are continuing to work with partners across health, policing and wider public services to drive down drug use, ensure more people receive timely treatment and support, and make our streets and communities safer." 17 17
Daily Mail
20 hours ago
- Daily Mail
How one million white Europeans - many seized on the south coast of England - were sold to the Muslim world and brutally exploited in the slavery scandal the Left DON'T want to speak about
When Englishman Thomas Pellow was 27, he led a slave-hunting expedition to the West African coast. His orders were to plunder the villages, kill the adults and capture the children. But Pellow was not a mercenary employed in the transatlantic slave trade, which sent millions of its victims across the ocean. He was a slave himself – taken prisoner as a child by the Moroccan Sultan Moulay Ismail. And 300 years ago, he was far from alone. The sultan owned an estimated 25,000 European slaves, many seized in raiding expeditions on the south coast of England as well as countries as far afield as Iceland. Though it is almost forgotten today – suppressed, perhaps, by some squeamish historians – the Muslim trade in both black African and white European slaves was deeply feared for three centuries. Yet, at the time, dozens of memoirs, many of them bestsellers, were published by former slaves who had escaped from captivity, with horrendous stories of torture, rape and cold-blooded murder. Now, a book by historian Justin Marozzi unflinchingly reveals the extent of slavery in Arab countries, which was conducted with unequalled brutality. More shocking still, he shows that it continued in much of the Islamic world well into the 20th century – and, for hundreds of thousands of West Africans born into life as slaves, carries on to this day. For Marozzi to investigate these stories, let alone publish, is courageous. His book invites an inevitable backlash from Left-wing academics and broadcasters who focus solely on the slave trade triangle between Europe, West Africa and the Americas that operated from the 16th to the 19th centuries. To accuse Arabs, Turks and other Muslims of complicity in slavery is likely to be met with accusations of 'Islamophobia'. Yet, as Marozzi's research proves beyond doubt, slavery in the Muslim world has existed for far longer, caused even more deaths and misery and inflicted tortures that exceed anything imagined by the worst of the transatlantic traders. As a single example: in the Victorian era, Sudan exported countless thousands of eunuchs to serve as slaves in Turkey and the Arab countries. Eunuchs, male slaves who had been castrated as pre-pubescent boys, were valued for their inability to procreate, and so could be trusted not to get sexually involved with their master's wives and consorts. An estimated 35,000 pre-pubescent boys died from botched castration in Sudan every year, in order for 3,500 to survive without a penis or testicles. Thomas Pellow escaped castration. But he suffered the worst a life of slavery could inflict in many other ways for more than 20 years. He was an 11-year-old cabin boy on a ship skippered by his uncle, sailing out of Falmouth, Cornwall, in 1715, when he was taken captive. Off Cape Finisterre on Spain's Atlantic coastline, his craft was set upon by North African pirates and, after a battle in which young Thomas nearly drowned, he was taken in chains to Meknes in Morocco as a gift for Moulay Ismail – self-styled Prince of the Faithful. The sultan gave Thomas to his own son, Moulay Spha, who forced him to convert to Islam. The boy, brought up a Christian, resisted for months, despite beatings during which he was suspended by the ankles to have the soles of his feet thrashed – a torture known as bastinado. Thomas still refused to renounce Christianity, later writing: 'My tortures were now exceedingly increased, burning my flesh off my bones by fire.' Eventually, he pretended to submit – but 'I always abominated them and their accursed principle of Mahometism'. His youthful defiance must have impressed the Arabs because he was soon back in the sultan's service. Pellow was put in command of a slave-hunting expedition to Guinea, with an army of 30,000 soldiers – all slaves themselves – and 60,000 camels. He was so trusted that the sultan even made him guardian of his 4,000 slave concubines. In addition to his British, Spanish, Portuguese and French slaves, the sultan was estimated to own nearly a quarter of a million black Africans. To breed more slaves, he staged mass weddings for up to 1,600 people, marrying couples by pointing to them and declaring: 'That one takes that one.' Pellow wrote: 'He always yokes his best complexioned subjects [i.e. white males] to a black helpmate, and the fair lady must take up with a negro . . . as firmly noosed as if they had been married by a pope.' Muslims considered all children born to slave mothers to be slaves themselves, regardless of who their fathers were. Brave Thomas finally escaped after 23 years as a captive, fleeing over the Atlas Mountains and reaching his parents' home in Cornwall months later, in 1738, after 'long straying and grievous hardships'. His resulting book proved a sensation, promising 'a particular account of the astonishing tyranny and cruelty of their emperors, together with a description of the miseries of the Christian slaves'. Even Samuel Pepys addressed the topic in his famous diaries. In February 1661, he recorded how he'd been drinking until four in the morning with two British men who had been slaves in Algiers, a Captain Mootham and Mr Dawes. They had survived on bread and water, he wrote, and were regularly beaten on their feet and their stomachs. At night, any slave, male or female, could be ordered to their master's tent and raped. Muslim pirates sailing out of Algiers raided all along the Mediterranean and out into the Atlantic as far as Madeira. By the 1620s, 10,000 European slaves were being held in the city's dungeons, including Scots, Irish, Dutch, Danish, Slav and Spanish captives. Others included Japanese and Chinese victims. The Flemish aristocrat Emanuel d'Aranda, who spent two years as a prisoner doing punishingly heavy labour before he was ransomed, calculated that 600,000 European Christians were enslaved in Algiers between 1536 and 1640 alone. That tallies with the generally accepted estimate that a million white Europeans were enslaved from the 1500s to the 1800s. Raids on coastal villages were horrific and bloody. Devon and Cornwall suffered repeated slave raids in the 1620s; and in 1627, two bands of slavers hit south-east Iceland, capturing more than 400 men, women and children. A man named Bjarni Valdason, who tried to escape, was clubbed over the head and killed, his body butchered into small pieces 'as if he were a sheep', according to one witness. Houses were torched. One young mother and her two-year-old toddler were hurled into a blazing building and burned to death: 'When she and the poor child screamed and called to God for help, the wicked Turks bellowed with laughter. They struck both child and mother with the sharp points of their spears, forcing them into the fire, and even stabbed fiercely at the poor burning bodies.' Those are the words of Olafur Egilsson, a Lutheran minister in his 60s, who was beaten until he could no longer stand, as the pirates tortured him to find out if the villagers had hidden treasure. Distressing and deeply shocking as these individual stories are, they are a few cases among millions. The scale of slavery in the Muslim world was vast beyond imagination. 'At one time,' the eminent historian Professor Robert Tombs says, 'everyone knew about it. It was one of the main hazards of Mediterranean commerce for Western sailors. But today, most people are completely unaware it ever happened.' Partly, that is due to the current insistence that the British empire was the source of all historical evils. It does not suit the politically correct narrative to admit that Muslim slave traders were the scourge of Africa, long before the Europeans arrived . . . and long after they left. Citing the Encyclopedia Britannica, Marozzi estimates that in 1861, at the start of the American Civil War that would put an end to U.S. slavery, there were more slaves in the Muslim states of West Africa than in the Confederate states of the Deep South of America. The Arab slave trade dated back long before the beginnings of Islam in the 7th century. The Prophet Mohammed owned 70 slaves including Persians, Ethiopians, Copts (Christians from modern-day Egypt) and Syrians. Between that time and the First World War, up to 17 million people were taken prisoner and used as slaves in Muslim armies and in brothels, on building sites and in private homes. That could be 50 per cent more than the total number of Africans transported across the Atlantic, a figure usually put at 11 million to 15 million. By sickening tradition, the treatment of women was especially brutal. A witness at the Persian court of Musa al-Hadi, in the 8th century, described how the caliph once left in the middle of a meal after receiving a message from a eunuch. When they returned, the eunuch was carrying a platter covered with a napkin, and trembling. Hadi whipped away the cloth, revealing, 'the heads of two slave girls, with more beautiful faces and hair, by God, than I had ever seen before'. Hadi explained, as though nothing unusual had occurred: 'We received information that these two were in love with each other. So I set this eunuch to watch over them and report to me. I found them under a single coverlet committing an immoral act. I thereupon killed them.' The castration of boys to make them into eunuchs was still practised as recently as the 19th century. The French aristocrat and explorer Count Raoul du Bisson saw it performed in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), calling the operation 'barbarous and revolting'. 'The little, helpless and unfortunate prisoner, or slave, is stretched out on an operating table,' he wrote in 1863. 'His neck is made fast in a collar fastened to the table, and his legs spread apart, and the ankles made fast to iron rings; his arms are held by an assistant. The operator then seizes the little penis and scrotum, and with one sweep of a sharp razor removes all the appendages.' A bamboo catheter was then inserted into the urethra, to prevent it from scarring over, and hot oil, honey, tar or mule dung smeared over the cuts. The boy, typically aged between six and 12, was buried in warm sand up to his neck to stop him from moving while his wounds healed. A majbub, or eunuch without his penis, fetched a much higher price at slave markets than a khasi, one who had merely had his testicles removed. A khasi was more likely to serve as a soldier or policeman than a majbub, who could be trusted in the harem. British people 200 years ago were no less repulsed by such stories than we are today. As well as leading the way in ending the transatlantic slave trade in the 19th century, Great Britain put intense pressure on the Ottoman empire in Turkey and the whole of the Arab world to end slavery. 'Even while suppressing the transatlantic slave trade,' says historian and ethicist Professor Nigel Biggar, 'the British empire was busy trying to suppress the Arab slave trade in Africa – especially East Africa – including using the Royal Navy to intercept slave ships between Zanzibar and the Middle East.' But in much of West Africa, slavery continues today. In Bamako, the capital of Mali, Marozzi met an escaped slave named Hamey, in his late 50s, who was living in destitution with his two wives and 12 children. 'I didn't choose to be a slave,' he said. 'My father was a slave, my grandfather was a slave, and many more generations before them. I was a slave until the day I refused to go on. I'd had enough of it. And that's when the violence began.' Hamey spoke out because he was sick of seeing his wives and daughters raped. 'They can do it whenever they like. I could never accept that. My master used to tell me: "She may be your wife but I can take her whenever I want her." ' But when he pleaded for his family to be given their freedom, Hamey was set upon by the head of his village and a group of young men. 'They ripped off my clothes and, while I lay naked in the dirt, they whipped and kicked me and beat me in public. Everyone was watching. The whole community. They were cheering and filming it all on their phones. 'It lasted five hours, then the youths rushed to my house and drove me and my family out. They took my cows, my goats and my sheep. Suddenly, I had nothing, but I still had everyone to feed.' It's a bleak prospect: slavery or starvation. And for an estimated one million slaves in Mali, an Islamic country, that is all life holds to this day.
The Independent
a day ago
- The Independent
More than 50 children swim from Morocco to Spanish enclave in bid to reach Europe
At least 54 children and about 30 adults swam from Morocco to Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta in rough seas and fog, Spanish television reported on Saturday. Video footage on Spanish television channel RTVE showed Civil Guard launches making repeated rescue attempts to bring some of the swimmers to safety, while others swam across to the enclave. The children, who were mostly Moroccan, were taken to temporary centres in Ceuta, where authorities called for help from the central government in dealing with the latest arrivals. "Don't leave us alone. This is a matter of state. This has to be resolved," Juan Rivas of the Ceuta regional government told reporters on Saturday. On August 26 last year, hundreds of migrants took advantage of a thick mist to swim to Ceuta from neighbouring Morocco, local police said. In 2021, one boy was seen floating on empty plastic bottles in his attempt to reach Ceuta. Spain's two enclaves on Morocco's Mediterranean coast, Ceuta and Melilla, share the European Union's only land borders with Africa. The enclaves sporadically experience waves of attempted crossings by migrants trying to reach Europe. Moroccan nationals detained during the crossings are immediately sent back to Morocco unless they are underage or seeking asylum. People from other nationalities are taken to special centres where they are given shelter and released after a few days. Three years ago, at least 23 people died in a stampede when about 2,000 migrants tried to storm into Melilla, pushing down the border fence.
