A Moroccan testifies: “I was like a slave”

Arriving in Bordeaux to earn a better living, a 20-year-old Moroccan and other foreign workers were victims of human trafficking on a vegetable plantation in Lot-et-Garonne. The case is being judged before the Agen criminal court.

“I was a really happy young man, I felt good, I was very motivated,” remembers Oussama, a 20-year-old Moroccan who arrived in Bordeaux in search of a better life. But once at the home of his operator, who is supposed to accommodate him, he loses his illusions. “There were his children and workers in a house in very poor condition. She took me to a dirty room where there were six people. I wanted to leave, but it was my first day,” he tells franceinfo. Osama has a huge workload. “We started work at 8 a.m., without safety gear, in shorts and a T-shirt. I worked every day, between 9 and 11 hours a day, with a temperature that reached 36 degrees, specifies the young Moroccan. Without food and without money, they decided for me what I was going to do during the day, I had no room for maneuver. »