By Stephanie van den Berg

THE HAGUE (Reuters) -Prosecutors in the Netherlands on Wednesday asked judges to convict an Eritrean suspect accused of being a notorious trafficker who tortured African refugees and migrants, and to sentence him to 20 years in prison.

According to prosecutors, 42-year-old Amanuel Walid – known as Tewelde Goitom – ran a migration route to Europe via Libya along with his organisation. The prosecutors, whose investigation focussed on the period between 2014 and 2019, say the group detained thousands of African migrants in warehouses and tortured them to extort ransoms from their families.

At trial at a district court in the Dutch town of Zwolle, Goitom, who was extradited to the Netherlands in 2022, only spoke to tell judges they have the wrong man and to invoke

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