Ana Gomes, author . - Madam President, the CNN reportage 'Death in the desert' broadcast last November gave me the shivers. It exhibited the horrific and inhumane trade going on in the Sinai Peninsula with tremendous specificity at best, or deep complicity - most likely of the Egyptian authorities - with the organised criminal networks that kidnap refugees in order to extract and sell their organs, butchering their bodies cruelly and disrespectfully.

This resolution of the European Parliament is long overdue, since the monstrosity of the criminal activity conducted by some Sinai Bedouin tribes, at the service of some well-known health professional vultures with connections well beyond Egypt, is undeniably documented, and it is the poorest of the poor - men, women and children, refugees trying to escape oppression and misery such as the Eritrean Solomon W. whom we speak about in this resolution - who, instead of protection and support, are experiencing detention, rape, forced labour, ransom, torture and death in the most obscene and primitive ways.

This is a matter that must be taken up as a priority by the European Union High Representative, with the Egyptian and Israeli authorities at the highest level, and that should be referred by the European Union to the UN Security Council if no resolute action is taken soon to stop the criminal networks operating in the Sinai, to make stringent efforts to punish those responsible and to afford protection to the victims and any passing refugees.