Refugees Deeply | 22.05.2018
by Daniel Howden , Giacomo Zandonini
Mahamane Ousmane is an unrepentant people smuggler. He makes no effort to deny transporting migrants “countless times” across the Sahara into Libya. When he is released from prison in Niger’s desert city of Agadez, he intends to return to the same work.
The 32-year-old is even more adamant he has done nothing wrong. “I don’t like criminals. I am no thief. I have killed no one,” he says.
As Ousmane speaks, a small circle of fellow inmates in filthy football shirts and flip-flops murmur in agreement. The prison at Agadez, where the French once stabled their horses in colonial times, now houses an increasing number of people smugglers. These “passeurs,” as they are known in French, have found themselves on the wrong side of a recent law criminalizing the movement of migrants north of Agadez.