WEEKS after Hamdy Ibrahim left his village in Egypt’s Nile Delta hoping to reach Europe, his brother’s phone rang with a chilling message from Libya: pay now or the boy would die.
A smuggler was on the line, demanding 190,000 Egyptian pounds to secure the 18-year-old’s place on a boat, part of a rising exodus that last year made Egyptians the top African and second-largest global group of irregular migrants to Europe.
