Full com­plaint in PDF format

This Com­plaint seeks redress against indi­vid­u­als who abducted and traf­ficked thou­sands of small boys from South Asia and Africa to the United Arab Emi­rates and other Arab states and enslaved them to work as camel jock­eys, camel train­ers and camel ten­ders in the des­o­la­tion and heat of the Ara­bian Penin­sula. Boys as young as two years old were stolen from their par­ents, traf­ficked to for­eign lands, and put under the watch of bru­tal over­seers in camel camps through­out the region. These claims are brought to pun­ish the per­pe­tra­tors and com­pen­sate the vic­tims of child slav­ery and an inter­na­tional slave trade in small chil­dren that seems unimag­in­able in the 2 1st century.

Camel rac­ing has been a favored Arab pas­time for cen­turies. As wealth grew in the oil rich Ara­bian Penin­sula, camel rac­ing grew and took on the trap­pings of an estab­lished sport patron­ized by the rich­est and most pow­er­ful sheikhs. So that their camels could run faster and enter into train­ing at a younger age, the sheikhs began using small boys as jock­eys and train­ing rid­ers. Despite the even­tual enact­ment of legal weight and age lim­its, child jock­eys weigh­ing less than 20 kilo­grams, or 44 pounds, and usu­ally between four years old and ado­les­cence, became and remained the stan­dard in races for much of the past thirty years. Boys as young as three years old were used in train­ing to accus­tom juve­nile camels to carry a rider, and were at the same time trained them­selves to be jockeys.