By Politico Staff Writer
A 20 year- old Sierra Leonean woman who was deported from Iraq and got stranded in Senegal, has been taken in by officials at the Sierra Leone Embassy in Dakar.
Mabinty Conteh, who reportedly looked emaciated and carrying only her Sierra Leonean passport, was found at the country’s airport in the capital Dakar by a local security officer who then contacted the Sierra Leone Ambassador to Senegal, Alhaji Brima Elvis Koroma. The young woman was said to be highly traumatised, and bore signs similar to those of victims of human trafficking.
On Monday, November 2nd, 2020, the Head of Chancery, Saidu Timbo, accompanied by the Information Attachè, Ishmael Bayoh and the Protocol Officer, Cheikh Ndiaye, received the woman. She could hardly give accurate information about herself or her family and only explained that she lived at Calaba Town and Bakeh Loko in Port Loko, a press statement from the embassy said.
According to her, she had a child and a husband whose name she could not tell.
Information on the woman’s passport proved that she left Sierra Leone in January and travelled by road to Guinea and then arrived in Dakar on the 19th January, 2020. She then left Dakar on January 24th for Iraq.
The woman has now been fully cared for by the Sierra Leone Embassy, which said she would be repatriated aboard Asky Airlines.
In 2019, 17 Sierra Leoneans were repatriated courtesy of the Sierra Leone Embassy in Dakar which paid their airfares to the tune of $5,000USD.
In early March 2020, another 23 Sierra Leoneans were arrested for the same illegal travelling. On Tuesday August 11th, 2020, 61 out of 87 Sierra Leoneans trafficked to Senegal were repatriated back home.
The traffickers recruit their targets in Sierra Leone and are made to travel to Senegal by road through Guinea. Senegalese agents then provide them with accommodation and all the necessary documentation through another agent residing in the Gulf Countries, before they are flown abroad with the connivance of some people at the Blaise Diagne International Airport in Dakar.
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