‘Recycling’ the migration books: How Egypt manipulates smuggler arrests for EU money

In early 2022, thousands of detainees locked up in a large hangar at Matrouh’s security forces camp rioted in protest of their prolonged custody. Although granted release orders, many of them had been “recycled” into new cases on the same charge: smuggling migrants out of Egypt. “Just bear with it for a while, the European Union is causing trouble. You’ll be released,” the camp’s commander at the time told them, according to two former detainees who spoke separately to Mada Masr over the past year.

Ahmed* was one of those detainees in Matrouh.

In mid-December 2021, he headed to Fayoum’s police station after a policeman delivered a message that “the investigations chief wants to have a quick chat — just five minutes and you’ll be back home.” But when Ahmed arrived, he found himself accused in a migrant smuggling case alongside dozens of others. 

“They told me it was a major crackdown on people smuggling migrants out of Egypt. I was thrown in with a group of others facing the same charges, and I spent 15 days there without anyone [officially] telling me what my charges were,” he tells Mada Masr. 

After two weeks in custody, Ahmed was transferred from Fayoum to Matrouh’s prosecutor office, where he faced formal charges for the first time. The interrogation lasted only a few minutes before the chief prosecutor charged him with “joining an organized criminal group smuggling migrants out of Egypt.” 

“I asked, ‘where are these people I’m supposedly smuggling?’ and he told me that the officer’s investigation reports say that they ran off into the desert,” he recalls. 

Ahmed was held in remand for four days before Matrouh’s judge ordered his release without bail. The prosecution appealed, but the judge upheld his decision and set his bail at LE10,000.

Yet despite being granted a release order and having paid bail, a police unit took Ahmed and other defendants straight from their cells to Matrouh’s security camp. “We sat in a big hangar with thousands of other detainees. When I saw how many people were there, I felt relieved. I thought, ‘There are so many of us — they will let us go,’” he says. “We stayed there for a week before we started rioting so they’d let us out.” Eventually, the security forces’ commander addressed the group, asking for patience and promising they would be freed.

But the promise was never fulfilled. Ahmed remained detained at the camp for another two weeks before being transferred to Aswan’s prosecution office, where he faced the same charges in a new case — once again, “smuggling a group out of Egypt.” The prosecution charged 17 people based on a report from a National Security Agency officer citing unnamed “confidential sources.” 

During questioning, the prosecutor told Ahmed and the others that they had been arrested just the day before and that they smuggled 17 individuals whose names — entirely fabricated — appeared on the report. “We were shocked,” Ahmed says. “How could we have been arrested the day before when we’d been transferred from Matrouh’s security camp?”

This cycle repeated again and again. After Aswan, Ahmed was charged in another case in Assiut, followed by cases in Alexandria and Akhmim, in Sohag, before being sent back to Matrouh, then Kafr al-Sheikh, followed by Abu Kabir in Sharqia and Tanta in Gharbia — where he was finally released. In total, he was recycled in nine cases with the same charges. 

“I spent nearly a year being shuffled between governorates — some months legally detained, others just stored in the fridge,” he says. “At several interrogations, I was told I’d been arrested just the day before, even though I’d already been in custody for months.”

Ahmed, a father of three, earns around LE4,800 per month as an elevator technician. "I didn’t know how I’d pay the bail for each case, but I kept hoping I’d eventually make it home," he says. "All three of my kids are in preschool. I ended up selling almost all my wife’s gold to cover the bail and prison visit costs. In total, I spent about LE180,000."

Since late 2021, the practice of recycling suspects in migrant smuggling cases has expanded. Most defendants are given a release order, pay bail and are then unlawfully detained for several more days before being charged in a new case — on the same allegations.

Over the past year, Mada Masr has spoken with dozens of sources — including defendants, lawyers, human rights advocates and both Egyptian and European officials — to understand the scope of this recycling phenomenon (in which, most commonly, defendants are indicted on the same charges they faced in prior cases to circumvent limits on remand detention) in migrant smuggling cases. All the sources agreed on one thing: the practice serves to appease Europeans eager to see tangible results in Egypt’s efforts to combat irregular migration.

A database compiled by Mada Masr shows the expanding scale of this trend. It includes a sample of 303 cases from 14 governorates between 2022 and 2024. Official case records list 1,368 defendants in cases of “smuggling migrants,” but on closer examination, the real number of unique individuals is just 759. The discrepancy comes from repeated charges brought against the same people, creating a misleading impression of the number of cases. 

Among the defendants, 265 were charged in at least one “recycled” case — around 35 percent of all defendants. One individual was recycled in ten cases, another in nine. Seventeen defendants were recycled in seven cases, and 15 others in five. 

[Download the database here]

A clear pattern runs through these cases: nearly identical investigation records, often to the point of complete duplication. Witness statements and confessions are the same, so are the charges.

For instance, in 200 separate cases, migrants gave prosecutors identical statements — that they "couldn’t remember the smuggler’s face or phone number." When asked about their phones, they all said that they had "lost them in the desert."

Maher al-Naqeeb, a lawyer specializing in migration, says that officers at the Interior Ministry’s National Coordinating Committee for Combating and Preventing Irregular Migration pressure migrants into providing false confessions against defendants before the prosecution. The goal, he explains, is to inflate the numbers. Under the law, at least three people must be involved for a case to be classified as an organized smuggling group, so officers push migrants to name suspects in order to build these cases, according to Naqeeb.

To keep the cases from collapsing, officers also instruct migrants to say they’ve lost their phones to avoid them being confiscated and examined, which could uncover evidence undermining the accusations, Naqeeb says. 

The recycling doesn’t stop at the accused. Karam Saber, a lawyer at the Land Center for Human Rights who represents one of the defendants, pointed out that even witnesses are repeated across different cases.

Lawyers and human rights advocates working in the migration file agree that Egypt’s recycling practices are driven by the government’s need to demonstrate ongoing success in curbing irregular migration to the EU.

Mostafa al-Sadeq Shawqi, a lawyer specializing in irregular migration, explains that the state benefits financially from the EU’s support for anti-migration efforts. The more smuggling cases and arrests Egypt reports to the EU, the more grants it receives, he says.

This has fueled a sharp rise in the recycling of suspects in irregular migration cases, a tactic previously widely used in political cases.

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These cases are primarily built on investigations conducted solely by officers from the Interior Ministry’s committee for combating illegal migration without any other supporting evidence, Shawqi says. In most instances, the arrest reports are identical — a "legal farce," as he puts it. In all of the cases, when prosecutors ask the officers who file these reports about the sources of their investigations, the response, Shawqi says, is always the same: "The sources are confidential and cannot be disclosed to ensure their safety and secrecy."

Some of these officers told Naqeeb that they file such reports "upon instruction." They are told that these cases are important due to their role in Egypt’s dealings with the EU, which necessitates official reports containing witness accounts and confessions. There is also an incentive for these officers: they receive bonuses proportional to the number of cases they process, which is why many police officers seek to transfer to the committee, Naqeeb says.

According to the database, 409 defendants were officially labeled as "fugitives," despite most of them leading normal lives and having never been contacted or pursued by the police, according to the lawyers. 

"A defendant suddenly finds out by chance that they are listed in a new case as a fugitive, even though no officer ever sent for them. And unfortunately, the judge never comments on this," a lawyer specializing in migration tells Mada Masr on condition of anonymity. 

The surge in labeling individuals as "fugitives," which began in 2024, along with the recycling of defendants, has contributed to the rise in the number of smuggling cases. This explains why the number of cases in 2024 far exceeds figures of the previous two years, according to the lawyer. 

Defense lawyers involved in 50 cases in Mada Masr’s database also point to discrepancies between actual detention dates and what is recorded in police reports. In many instances of recycling, the accused remains in custody while new recycled case reports falsely state that they were arrested after their release.

Despite international reports praising Egypt's efforts to curb irregular migration within legal frameworks, the reality on the ground tells a different story.

"If recycling were isolated incidents, one might argue that the prosecution is unaware of it," says Ahmed Othman, a lawyer at the Association of Freedom of Thought and Expression. "But when a defendant remains in custody in a police station and is then recycled into new cases, the prosecution should, after receiving a report that the defendant is [still detained] in the station, request a search warrant. Yet, the prosecution takes no action, and everyone working in the prosecution office is aware of this widespread practice called recycling."

Saber echoes this view: "The presence of lawyers is meaningless — neither we, the prosecution, nor the court have any role. Everything is controlled by the anti-smuggling committee and National Security Agency." Even when some defendants are released, he adds, the criteria remain unclear. "Some are granted release after three cases, others are recycled five times or more. To this day, we have no idea what the criteria is that determines whether someone will be recycled or set free."

All these cases are included in reports submitted by Egypt to the EU and international organizations. The National Coordinating Committee for Combating and Preventing Irregular Migration, the governmental body overseeing the matter, in coordination with the Foreign Ministry, shares data on smuggling defendants with European and UN bodies, a senior official in the committee tells Mada Masr on condition of anonymity. However, the official says, they are "not obligated to send these reports on a regular basis" and it is done "transparently, as a point of pride in our efforts to combat migration."

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Migration has become the EU’s primary concern following a surge in irregular migration to Europe over the past decade and the adoption of increasingly hardline political rhetoric against migrants amid the rise of the right wing. This has influenced the EU’s relations with countries from which refugees and irregular migrants depart — including Egypt.

In 2016, Egypt passed a law to combat irregular migration, while the EU adopted a strategy of providing financial support to Egypt to help control migration flows originating from its territory.

In late 2018, the EU signed two agreements with Egypt worth 135 million euros. One of these agreements allocated a 60-million euro package to the Fighting Migration Challenges in Egypt program, which focuses on “combating irregular migration and human smuggling and trafficking, as well as addressing the root social and economic causes of the phenomenon by supporting seven projects in 15 governorates,” the Investment and International Cooperation Ministry stated at the time.

These agreements were part of a series of meetings between President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and European officials. The purpose of these meetings, according to a report published by Al-Hurra citing The Associated Press, was to have the Egyptian coast guard patrol waters off Libya — the main departure point for people heading to Italy — and return rescued individuals to Africa.

In October 2022, Egypt received another 80 million euros in funding from the EU to support the Egyptian coast guard and border forces in curbing irregular migration. The funds were provided for the purchase of surveillance equipment, including search-and-rescue vessels, thermal imaging cameras and satellite positioning systems.

The culmination of this support came in March 2024 with an unprecedented agreement. The EU announced a deal with Egypt under which it would receive a funding package worth 7.4 billion euros, paid over three years, to bolster its economic capacity in exchange for assisting in border management, anti-smuggling measures and voluntary return programs.

The package included loans, investments, and cooperation on migration and counterterrorism. This came just days after the EU signed similar agreements with other North African countries.

According to the EU’s statement, the aid package included 5 billion in macro-financial assistance disbursed in conditional installments, 1.8 billion in investments and 600 million in grants, of which 200 million was earmarked for migration management.

A member of the European Parliament, who spoke to Mada Masr at the time on condition of anonymity, expressed concerns about the “obscurity” surrounding the agreements and the European Parliament’s limited oversight. They noted that the deal was presented to the European Parliament at the end of December — just two weeks before the holiday break, meaning that the timeframe for European Parliament members to review it was limited.

For the MEP, the way these agreements were concluded leaves them “open to interpretation” by both sides. The EU may view them as migration control deals and a means for the European Parliament members to claim they are acting on migration before the European election cycle, while Egypt may see them more in the light of large-scale economic assistance from Europe.

This unprecedented agreement came after four years of failed negotiations, according to a senior EU diplomat, who previously spoke to Mada Masr.

The deadlock, according to a Europe-based analyst specializing in EU-Egypt relations who previously spoke to Mada Masr, stemmed from the EU’s initial push for a programmatic assistance deal, which Egypt staunchly refused, demanding general budgetary support over which it could have more financial and political control. The EU was not inclined to engage in such budgetary assistance.

However, with the European Parliament elections approaching at a time where irregular migration and measures to curb it played a key role in voter decisions, the success of the Tunisia deal in reducing migration, the outbreak of war in Sudan and Gaza, and Egypt’s increasingly vocal rhetoric about hosting refugees as a burden on the state, all contributed to shifting the EU’s stance on this type of aid, according to the analyst.

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The drawn-out negotiations between Egypt and the EU prior to reaching an agreement suggest, according to researchers and human rights advocates focused on irregular migration, that Egypt has strategically leveraged the migration issue primarily to secure the largest possible financial support while simultaneously alleviating diplomatic pressure over its human rights record.

During most meetings between Sisi and European officials, Egypt’s commitment to combating irregular migration across the Mediterranean has remained a key talking point.

Irregular migration emerged on Egypt’s agenda after the Rashid tragedy in 2016, when a boat carrying hundreds of migrants capsized 12 kilometers off the coast of Rashid, killing 204 people.

The approach to irregular migration revolves around two main aspects: curbing migrant smuggling networks and encouraging those who arrive in Egypt to stay there rather than continue their migration journey to Europe.

The most pivotal step for Egypt was the passage of the law on combating illegal migration and smuggling of migrants in November 2016. Following its ratification, the National Coordinating Committee for Combating and Preventing Irregular Migration was restructured by a prime ministerial decree, placing it under the direct authority of the Prime Minister, with its headquarters at the Foreign Ministry.

According to the law, the committee is chaired by an expert in the field and includes representatives from various ministries, including foreign affairs, defense, interior, legal affairs and parliament, justice, labor and social solidarity, among others.

One of the committee’s key roles, as outlined in the law, is to facilitate bilateral and multilateral judicial cooperation agreements to track smugglers through exchanging visits, legal expertise, and criminal rulings and legal publications with relevant countries. It is also tasked with establishing memorandums of understanding between the Egyptian Public Prosecution and its international counterparts to streamline judicial cooperation on migration-related crimes.

The committee is also responsible for submitting reports on migrant smugglers and their numbers and ensuring members of the EU are notified, according to several lawyers specializing in migration.

Human rights advocates working on migration issues argue that the law primarily focuses on criminalization and imprisonment as deterrents to smuggling. The law stipulates a minimum prison sentence of five years with hard labor and a fine of no less than LE500,000 for migrant smugglers and brokers.

Saber believes that such heavy reliance on incarceration alone "will not resolve the crisis of migration across the sea." Meanwhile, amendments to the law in 2024 only increased the severity of the penalties.

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Egypt’s policies have indeed succeeded in significantly reducing the departure of boats carrying irregular migrants from its shores in recent years. Yet this hasn’t stopped migration altogether — it redirected the flow westward, to Libya’s coastline, under the watch of the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.

According to a 2018 UN expert panel report, the LNA-affiliated Subul al-Salam Brigade, which is officially tasked with combating cross-border human trafficking, has itself been implicated in smuggling migrants.

Libya has since become a major departure hub for these boats. According to a 2023 investigative report by Mada Masr, most of these crossings are organized by two separate networks on either side of the Egypt-Libya border. Social media is filled with brokers and intermediaries managing every step of the journey. The process is much simpler than one might expect. Once a migrant finds a broker, they are given a departure date for a microbus heading to Libya for as little as LE1,000. In some cases, the broker even facilitates the border crossing free of charge. You can pay later, no problem.

As a result, and despite the sharp decline in departures from Egyptian shores, the number of Egyptian irregular migrants has surged dramatically in recent years. In just two months, between December 2021 and January 2022, a total of 117,156 Egyptian migrants were recorded from Libya, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Italy’s Interior Ministry, meanwhile, stated that between January 1 and June 13, 2022, 3,935 Egyptians arrived in Italy — accounting for 18 percent of all migrant arrivals during that period — second only to Bangladeshi nationals.

In June 2023, a boat carrying irregular migrants capsized off the Libyan coast en route to Europe. Hundreds died — most of them Egyptians. Several international organizations concerned with migration described it as one of the worst Mediterranean tragedies of the past decade.

In parallel with efforts to prevent migration to Europe, Egypt’s approach to irregular migration also involves hosting refugees and migrants who arrive in the country for various reasons. The Egyptian government tends to exaggerate the number of migrants and refugees in order to secure larger grants. Egyptian officials have repeatedly claimed that the country hosts nine million refugees. But, according to a former official in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, speaking to Mada Masr, this figure is entirely inaccurate.

EuroMed Rights President Wadih al-Asmar argues that the Egyptian government — like other North African regimes — leverages the migration issue as a means to extract concessions from the EU. For its part, the EU seeks to protect its borders from afar by outsourcing migration control to states like Egypt and Tunisia, or Libyan militias, enabling these entities to carry out measures that would be considered human rights violations were they implemented within Europe’s own borders.

As a result, Asmar explains, the EU rejects calls from human rights organizations for transparency regarding these financial grants and how they are spent.

Egypt, in turn, has consistently used the migration file as a diplomatic bargaining chip to secure financial and political advantages. Senior EU Advocacy Representative at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies Leslie Piquemal previously said that since 2016, Egyptian diplomats have consistently asked European officials for increased grants, arguing that Egypt deserves a financial package on par with what Turkey received following its migration deal with the EU.

According to Piquemal, Egyptian diplomats justify their demands by pointing to the large numbers of migrants and refugees within Egypt’s borders, insisting that it is appropriate for the country to receive the same funds as Turkey.

On her conversations with EU officials regarding cooperation with the Egyptian government and the grants Egypt receives to curb migration, Piquemal says: “Their response has been that, ‘there are many Egyptian migrants and refugees leaving Egypt, and we are unable to accommodate those numbers. We must close this route.’” 

EU officials have defended the funding by insisting that it is meant to address migration to Europe and prevent further disasters at sea. They maintain that the grants do not contribute to human rights violations but instead “support economic development and social services in areas from which people migrate.”

Following the outbreak of the war on Gaza in October 2023, and the subsequent wave of regional geopolitical shifts that continue to unfold, Europe has increasingly prioritized Egypt’s stability, according to Piquemal. She explained that what she calls an “unethical discourse” has taken hold in Europe, and that voices opposing the EU’s growing right-wing policies in dealing with migrants or human rights crises have significantly diminished.

Diplomatic sources who previously spoke to Mada Masr in June confirmed that the overarching goal of the financial assistance is to invest in Egypt’s stability — an objective made more urgent by the ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Sudan, as well as Libya’s fragile political landscape.

Against this backdrop, all parties have largely ignored concerns about the legal safeguards for migrants and those accused of operating smuggling networks. Ultimately, this culminated in Egypt receiving the largest financial aid package in EU history — worth 7.4 billion euros.

This intricate web of Egyptian and European interests is sustained on the continued recycling of thousands of detainees in an imprisonment machine showing no sign of slowing. 

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*Pseudonym. The person’s data has also been removed from the database to preserve their anonymity.