KAFR ABDALLAH AZIZAH: Weeks after Hamdy Ibrahim left his village in Egypt’s Nile Delta hoping to reach Europe, his brother’s phone rang with a chilling message from Libya: pay now or the boy would die.
A smuggler was on the line, demanding 190,000 pounds ($4,000) to secure the 18-year-old’s place on a boat, part of a rising exodus that last year made Egyptians the top African and second-largest global group of irregular migrants to Europe.
“I told him we couldn’t afford it,” his brother Youssef told AFP from Kafr Abdallah Aziza in Sharqiya, an hour’s drive from Cairo.
“But he warned: ‘Handle it like the other families do. Otherwise he’ll be thrown into the sea.’“
Hamdy left in November with a dozen peers, vanishing without a word after contacting smugglers online. Soon, calls poured in from Libya.
