Ethiopians face beatings and bullets as Saudi ‘deportation machine’ cranks up

Saudi Arabia denies claims that staff at detention facilities treat violent abuse of undocumented migrants 'like a sport'

When police arrested Tayib Mohammed at the southern border of Saudi Arabia, they seized all his worldly possessions and set them on fire.

The 45-year-old undocumented Ethiopian migrant was trying to cross from Yemen after a five-day trek through the bush. "They told me to undress," he recalled several weeks later in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, wearing sandals and pyjamas. "They took away everything I had - phone, clothes, money. They burned them in front of me."