The Arabist

The Arabist

By Issandr El Amrani and friends.

Egyptians in California charged with slavery

Unfortunately, this kind of treatment of domestic servants is all-too-common in Egypt and the region, particularly the Gulf. These sadists decided they could do it in California too:

Egyptian couple in California plead guilty to slavery charges

Fri Jun 30, 7:45 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - An Egyptian couple living in southern California have pleaded guilty to slavery charges involving a now-16 year old girl they forcibly kept working in their home for two years, according to US attorneys Friday.

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Abdelnasser Eid Youssef Ibrahim, 45 and his ex-wife, Amal Ahmed Ewis-abd Motelib, 43, are accused of harboring an illegal alien, obtaining labor by force, and conspiracy.

The girl worked as nanny and housekeeper for a family of seven up to 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

"She had to work all day long," Assistant US Attorney Robert Keenan said. "They used unlawful forms of coercion such as hitting and slapping, and threats of arrest by the police if she ever went outside on her own."

The girl began working for the couple as a domestic servant in Egypt in 1999, and the couple brought her into the United States in 2000 where her forced servitude continued for two years.

The couple kept the girl in an unfurnished, unventilated, and unlighted garage that building inspectors deemed "deplorable."

The slaveholders, who pleaded guilty Thursday, are expected to be sentenced to three years in prison and required to pay the girl 101,516 dollars in restitution.

Ironically, they could have given her a decent place to live, decent salary and flight back home once a year for much, much less than that. One only wishes these types of people could face jail in Egypt!