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By Nurit Wurgaft "Haaretz", February 01, 2007


Prisoner of circumstance

For nine months now, M., an orphaned teenager from Guinea in Africa, has been stuck in the Immigration Administration prison in Hadera. And not because he committed some serious crime that justifies incarceration. On the contrary - it appears that he himself was a victim of human trafficking. Yet there he sits in jail. He was imprisoned after being caught working in a restaurant without a permit. Since he has no passport, he cannot be deported, and since he is a minor, the state is unwilling to release him and just put him on the street. However, the state is not offering any other solution. At one point, it even argued that the prison in Hadera is an appropriate place to house minors on a permanent basis.

M. does not know exactly how old he is. He thinks he is 15, and the police don't believe that he is any older than that. He does not know his birth date and has never celebrated a birthday ("I'd like to see something like that," he says). Nor does he know exactly when his parents were killed. It may have happened in 2002, or perhaps earlier, in 2000. He was born and grew up in southern Guinea, in a small village called Gueguedou, the only child of poor farmers who couldn't even afford to send him to the village elementary school. On the day his parents were killed, he'd gone with some of the neighboring children to watch television at the home of a childless woman from Senegal who has invited them over. The village had no electricity, but this woman, Fatma, had a private generator. M. remembers that they watched a program about local music, which was very popular in Guinea. While they were watching television, a group of rebels from Sierra Leone raided the village. Such raids, by rebels who pillaged villages in search of food, weapons and money, were not unusual in the area along the border with Sierra Leone.

When they heard the first shouts and gunshots, some of the children wanted to run outside and find their parents, but Fatma stopped them. "She turned off the generator and told us to sit still and be very quiet," M. recounts. They sat there in the darkness of the room and heard gunfire and the screams of people who'd been hurt and whose homes had been torched.

Afterward, M. understood that this woman, Fatma, had saved his life. The rebels apparently thought that the house was empty and didn't enter it. It was a long time before all the clamor outside subsided. Fatma instructed the children to stay in the house while she went out to inspect the damage. When she returned she told M. that his home had burned down and that she hadn't seen his parents. The rest of the children went out and found their parents, or other relatives. M. didn't have any relatives in the village. It grew late and no one had come looking for him, so he remained in Fatma's house. In the morning, after hearing neighbors say that his parents had been killed, Fatma offered to care for him and he accepted.

That same week, Fatma decided to leave Gueguedou and move to another village in the area called Farana. They settled there and Fatma enrolled M. in the village elementary school, which he attended for a few years. He learned to read and write, plus a little math and French. "I really liked learning French," he said recently. "I hoped that one day I'd be able to graduate and become an ambassador." His schooling was interrupted when Fatma decided to move to the capital, Conakry, and took him with her. When they arrived in the city, she did not enroll him in school again and he, who felt completely dependent on her, was afraid to ask.

From then on, he assisted her in a small haberdashery and souvenir shop that she'd opened. She traveled frequently between Guinea and Senegal for business (exporting palm oil and importing jewelry) and sometimes was gone for several days. When she was traveling, she would leave M. in the neighbors' care and he would run the store.

But most of his work consisted of running errands. Fatma would send him to bring things to her customers or send him off with clients to collect things they had to give her. Mostly these were small, well-wrapped packages, and he had no idea what was in them. From his description, it's likely that the legal business of exporting oil and importing jewelry served as a cover for other, more profitable and less legal dealings. It was certainly less suspicious to have a child handling the packages.

M. says that he never examined the packages or asked questions. "I trusted her and the people she worked with," he says. "Sometimes they would give me a little money that I kept for myself without telling her. She never gave me money. She bought me what she thought I needed, and I didn't want to ask her for things."


Exodus from Egypt

Last year, when the African Nations Cup soccer tournament was being held in Egypt, Fatma decided to go to the games and she took M. with her. She explained to him that she saw the games as a business opportunity, that she could sell souvenirs from Africa, and also portrayed the trip as a reward for his good work. She got him a passport and instructed him to say, if asked, that he was 17. In Cairo they stayed in a rented apartment and M. realized that it was the first time she was doing business there.

One day she took him to see a match between the teams from Guinea and Zambia. The game ended in the early evening and on the way back to the apartment he heard her talking with someone in French on her cell phone. He understood that she was talking to a client and that this person was waiting for them. When they arrived back at the apartment, a non-African man, whom M. refers to as "the Arab," was waiting there.

M. was sent off with the man without even being given time to change his clothes. He followed obediently. "I thought it would be like in Guinea, that she sent me with this man to pick some things up for her and that I'd come right back," he says.

When they got to the man's car, a van of the type used to ferry tourists about, M. says the man opened the back door and gestured to him to lay down on the seat. The man said one word in French, "Sleep," and put a finger to his lips to signal the boy to be quiet. M. began to suspect that maybe this wasn't another ordinary errand, but he didn't dare doubt the woman who'd saved his life and raised him for more than three years.

They drove for hours. M. didn't lift his head, but he heard the traffic around them fading away. When the van finally came to a stop and he looked around, he was shocked. "There was nothing there, just sand and sky, and I remember that there were lots of stars," he relates. "It was the first time I'd seen the desert. The Arab who drove the car pulled out a gun from behind his seat and placed it on his lap and signaled me to be quiet. I was very frightened. I was sure that my life was over, that the woman had given me to him so he would kill me."

They drove a few more kilometers in the sands until they reached a hidden camp, far from the road. There M. met nine young Africans who spoke a language he didn't recognize. A few of them also spoke a little French and thus he learned that they were all from Nigeria, but he was too scared to ask what they were doing there in the middle of the desert.

The next day Fatma called one of the smugglers and asked to talk with M. The smuggler handed him the phone. "She called to tell me goodbye," says M. "She said that our time together was over and that I was going to Israel. It was the first time in my life that I'd heard that name, Israel. She said I shouldn't be afraid, that she'd arranged for someone from my country to look after me there. She told me that his name was Gandu Jalou and that reassured me a bit, because from the name I could tell that chances were he wasn't just from my country but also from my tribe. I was afraid to be left alone, but I still trusted her. I also didn't believe that this was really the end of our connection. I was sure that I'd be with this man for a little while and that later on she'd bring me back to her."

The group spent several weeks in the camp in Sinai. When M. got in the Arab's van, he was carrying his documents in a small knapsack that also held an extra shirt and pair of pants. The smugglers took everything from him - knapsack, clothes and passport. "At night it was cold and there was no food, except for bread that the Bedouin baked on the bonfire," he says. "Sometimes the Nigerians collected money and had them buy biscuits and good bread for them, and they gave some to me, too. Overall, they treated me well, both the Nigerians and the Bedouin."

One morning, very early, the smugglers loaded them all onto a small Toyota truck. All 10 youths crowded onto the floor of the truck. They were covered with blankets and the Nigerians' suitcases were placed on top. M. had nothing except for the clothes he was wearing the night he went to the soccer match.

When they got to the border, the smugglers took them out of the truck and told them to climb over the fence. On the other side, a pickup truck was waiting. In it were three armed men who were not Africans. The 10 African youths sat in the back. When they got to Tel Aviv, M. was left off first. The smugglers knew the address that he was supposed to go to. "One of them got out of the car with me and told me to run to the building he showed me, and he ran with me," says M. "When we got to the building, a man came out who spoke to me in my tribal language and said that his name was Nafaya Jalou. I didn't know what to do, because the woman had told me that the name of the man who would look after me was Gandu Jalou, but I didn't say anything because I was glad to hear him speaking my language. When we went up to his apartment, I asked where Gandu was, and he said, 'That's me, but here I go by Nafaya.'

"I lived with Nafaya for three days. Then he gave me a cell phone and took me to work in a restaurant. He told me to do what they tell me and didn't say how many hours I was supposed to work. He said he'd call and come to pick me up but he didn't come. At night, when the restaurant closed, I went outside. I didn't know where to go. I sat outside, on the corner near the restaurant, and fell asleep. In the morning I got up and went back to work. Two other Guineans worked in this restaurant and after a few days one of them asked me why I came to work so early in the morning. I told him that I slept outside, next to the restaurant, and after that he took me to the apartment where he lived."


Arrested at the restaurant

M. still can't quite calculate how many hours he worked. He would start early in the morning, when the first employees arrived, and leave at night when the restaurant closed, but he was never paid a single shekel. It was hard work cleaning and washing dishes, he says, but he was afraid to leave. He figured that the money for his work would be paid to Nafaya and that Nafaya would eventually pay him something, but Nafaya was hard to get a hold of. "He didn't call, not even to see how I was doing," says M.

Nafaya had instructed him to call if he was ever arrested, but warned him not to mention their connection. "If they asked me how I got to Israel, he told me to say that the Arabs brought me," says M.

M. did not manage to keep working for very long. In mid-May, less than a month after coming to Israel, he was arrested at the restaurant along with two of his Guinean coworkers. "I called Nafaya and told him I'd been arrested," he says. "Nafaya told me not to worry, he'd get me out of jail, but that I mustn't tell anyone that I know him."

Nafaya was arrested a short time later. In October 2006 he was tried and convicted for conspiracy to commit a crime, for illegal residence and for abetting infiltrators. From M.'s story and from the testimony of others, it appears that he was part of a human labor trafficking ring. It is not known whether Fatma received payment from him in return for delivering M. to him, or in return for his labor.

M. didn't know all this when he was arrested. He went through the usual process: an interview by the Interior Ministry border control official who ordered his arrest, and later, at the Immigration Police's Tzohar detention facility, he was interviewed again by a judge from the Custody Court. Yonatan Berman, the lawyer who subsequently represented him, says that in both instances, M. was not treated as a victim of human trafficking for the purposes of forced labor, and that his young age was barely taken into account. A while later, he was transferred to the Immigration Police's Michal detention facility in Hadera.

Ostensibly, he could be released from the prison, since he has no documents and cannot be deported. But because of his age, he needs a guardian to extend him sponsorship. Since he spent only a very short time in the country before his arrest, he does not know anyone in the African refugee community who might be able to serve as his guardian. A newspaper interview might be able to help bridge the distance between him and the Israeli public, and lead, perhaps, to an Israeli family agreeing to serve as his guardian, as has happened in other cases.

But this time, unlike in the past, the Immigration Police imposed more obstacles and refused to allow a prison visit during which M. could be interviewed. This interview was conducted in lengthy telephone conversations, and with the assistance of some of his fellow inmates who are also waiting for guardians to get them released from jail. (The reason, according to the Immigration Administration: "The policy of the administration is to avoid interviews within the custody facilities lest this lead to agitation and stir things up, as has occurred in the past.")

The legal proceeding initiated in this case by attorney Berman on behalf of Moked - The Hotline for Migrant Workers, which seeks to compel the state to release him from prison and to find him an alternative framework, was conducted behind closed doors before Haifa District Court Judge Ron Shapira. This may have been done because M. is a minor, with the intent to protect his privacy, but it effectively isolates him further and makes it more difficult to understand the motives of the state, which has kept him locked up for the last nine months.

"I always heard about people who were taken to jail because they committed crimes, because they did bad things," says M. "I don't know what bad thing I did. I didn't know anything about prisons until now."

He was in prison in Hadera when the war in the north broke out and followed most of the events on television. One day, he says, "we heard a very loud noise. Then they told us that a rocket landed near us. That night I couldn't sleep. The whole time I was thinking about what would happen if a rocket landed on us. I was afraid that my life would end this way, that I'd die like this, in jail."

After the war ended, he calmed down a little and tried to adjust. The food isn't bad, he says, "but it's not the food I'm used to. I eat because I need to eat to stay alive. Sometimes we ask the jail director, all of us, for some rice cooked the way we like it."

He and his fellow inmates, other minors like him who lack visas, pass the days watching television. When they're let outside, for a half hour twice a day, they play soccer. "They brought us computers so we'd learn," he says, "but they're not connected to the Internet and anyway no one can really learn in these conditions. They're keeping us here and we don't know why or how long we'll be here. It's exasperating."

Three weeks ago, M. almost broke down. It happened, he says, after a police officer told him that he had little chance of ever leaving prison and resuming a normal life. "He told me, 'Either they'll deport you, or you'll be here in prison for the rest of your life," says M. To him, deportation means going back to another type of slavery in return for protection. For three days he couldn't eat or sleep. "I believe what the policemen tell me," he explains. "They're the ones who know what's going on here." The Immigration Administration explained that this officer, who "as part of his job, talks with the detainees," informed M. that there was going to be a hearing about his case "and that there were two options: Either he'd be released from the facility and stay with a family until deported from the country, or he would stay in the facility until deported from the country."

Only after he was finally persuaded that he still has a future, did he allow himself to dream: "If I get out of here one day, I'd like to study, because I didn't study very much. And I'd also like to work, because I don't have anyone to take care of me and also because that's what I know, how to work."

Last Wednesday, Haifa District Court Judge Ron Shapira handed down a ruling in the case of M. Though the judge did not impose upon the state the responsibility for looking after the youth, the ruling did contain some unprecedentedly harsh criticism of the Custody Court and its conduct in regard to the detention of foreign minors and foreigners in general.

The judge said that detention should be defined according to the Law of Entry to Israel as a process of detention until the completion of proceedings, and that "the stipulations of the Law of Entry to Israel ought to be interpreted in such a way as to be compatible with the stipulations of the Basic Law (on Human Dignity and Liberty - N.W.) and with the basic principles of laws concerning the supervision of a person's detention."

The ruling also contains criticism of the fact that M., who does not speak Hebrew or English, had no representation during the Custody Court hearings. "A review of the protocols indicates that the arguments that were made at all of them were completely identical and were apparently copied from one hearing to the other," said the judge, adding that, under the circumstances, the court should have appointed a lawyer to represent M. during the preliminary stages of the hearings, and that his lack of representation constituted a violation of his basic rights.

The judge also wrote: "I believe that an interpretation of the stipulations of the Law of Entry into Israel in such a way that makes it possible to keep a person in detention for an unlimited period of time, without the occurrence of a deportation proceeding, and without cause, is an interpretation that is incompatible with a constitutional regime in a democratic justice system." This ruling could have far-reaching implications, as there are currently dozens of Guineans in detention, some for many months already, with no possibility of obtaining passports or being deported.

Judge Shapira also writes: "The interpretation that allows for a person to be kept in custody in the absence of a deportation proceeding creates a situation whereby the cause for his being in custody/detention is the very fact of his being a foreigner in our land."

He continues: "I believe that the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state are not compatible with a legislative interpretation that allows for the unlimited detention of a person whose sole crime is being a foreigner in our country, even if he is residing here illegally ..."

In conclusion, Judge Shapira wrote that the continuing detention of M. amounts to "a detention that is improper and without purpose" and ordered his release. M. is due to leave prison within a few days, though it's unclear where he will go and who will care for him.


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