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A30 world news
Diahuebs 14 OctOber 2021

Ransomed and beaten: Migrants face abuse in Libyan detention

Touré’s, families sent money
He began his own attempt to the detained migrants and
in March 2015, taking odd guards took them to with-
jobs along the way to finance draw it.
the trip. Traffickers held him
captive for months twice, in Touré was taken from his cell
Niger and Algeria, before he three days after the phone
crossed into Libya in April call. He thought he would
2017, he said. walk free. Instead, the guards
sold him to a trafficker in Za-
Four months later, Touré wiya. He spent the next four
embarked from Libya, only years enslaved, working in
to be intercepted by the coast the trafficker’s warehouse.
guard and returned to Tripo-
li. At the port, he and other Finally his luck changed in
migrants attempted to flee September when the traf-
but were caught by security ficker’s wife took pity on
forces and taken to the al- him and persuaded her hus-
Nasr Martyrs detention cen- band to set him free, he said.
ter in Zawiya. Within days he was on a small
inflatable boat with 55 others
That’s when the torture start- attempting the Mediterra-
ed. He described how guards nean crossing.
would hang them upside
down and whip their bare Overladen, the boat did not
(AP) — Osman Touré was in recent months by the aid ter guards beat and tortured feet. At times other migrants make it far. Those onboard
crying from the pain of re- group, known by its French them, then extorted money were forced or given incen- were rescued by the Geo
peated beatings and torture as acronym MSF. from their relatives, sup- tives to take part in the vio- Barents 48 nautical miles
he dialed his brother’s cell- posedly in exchange for lence. off Libya’s coast. They were
phone number. The European Union has their freedom. Their bod- taken to Sicily, where Ital-
sent 455 million euros to ies showed traces of old and “A migrant from Ghana re- ian authorities permitted the
“I’m in prison in Libya,” Libya since 2015, largely recent injuries, and signs of fused to beat us, but there rescue ship to dock on Sept.
Touré said in that August channeled through U.N. bullet and knife wounds on was a Cameroonian who was 27 and let the migrants apply
2017 call. “They will kill me agencies and aimed at beefing their backs, legs, arms and really cruel,” Touré said. for asylum. They could still
if you don’t pay 2,500 dinars up Libya’s coast guard, rein- faces. be returned to their home
in 24 hours.” forcing its southern border His second week in prison, countries if their requests are
and improving conditions for On paper, the detention cen- six guards approached him. denied.
Within days, Touré’s fam- migrants. ters are run by the Director- One slapped him hard on the
ily transferred the roughly ate for Combating Illegal right side of his face. The rest Touré and other migrants
$550 demanded to secure his However, huge sums have Migration, which is overseen kicked and beat him. Then said that besides plain cruelty,
freedom from a government been diverted to networks by the Interior Ministry and he was handed a cellphone there was racism behind their
detention center in Libya. of militiamen and traffick- Libya’s interim authorities, and ordered to call his family. abuse in Libya. The U.N. re-
But Touré was not let go — ers who exploit migrants, ac- who took power earlier this port found the same — that
instead, he was sold to a traf- cording to a 2019 AP investi- year under U.N. auspices to Ten others in the cell were Black sub-Saharan Africans
ficker and kept enslaved for gation. Coast guard members carry out national elections forced to do the same. Three were likely to be subjected to
four more years. are also complicit, turning in December. But on the were taken out by the guards harsher treatment than oth-
migrants intercepted at sea ground, notorious militias in the next few days. He ers.
Touré is among tens of thou- over to detention centers un- remain in control, according doesn’t know what became
sands of migrants who have der deals with militias or de- to migrants and the U.N. in- of them, he said. “Libya isn’t a safe place for
endured torture, sexual vio- manding payoffs to let others vestigators. Black Africans,” Touré said.
lence and extortion at the go. The money sent by captives’
hands of guards in detention “Migrants are detained for relatives was usually trans- The point of arrival at one
centers in Libya, a major hub The practice continues un- indefinite periods without ferred via Western Union or of Libya’s ports was the first
for migrants fleeing poverty abated and U.N.-commis- an opportunity to have the an informal system of per- opportunity for Libya’s secu-
and wars in Africa and the sioned investigators said in legality of their detention re- sonal accounts to a trafficker rity forces to extract payment
Middle East, hoping for a a 32-page report last week viewed, and the only practical in coordination with the from migrants trying to reach
better life in Europe. that “policies meant to push means of escape is by paying guards. In some cases, like Europe.
migrants back to Libya to large sums of money to the
The 25-year-old Guinean, keep them away from Euro- guards or engaging in forced
along with two dozen other pean shores ultimately lead labor or sexual favors inside
migrants, spoke to The Asso- to abuses,” including possible or outside the detention,” the
ciated Press aboard the Geo crimes against humanity. U.N. report said.
Barents, a rescue vessel oper-
ated by the medical aid group Hundreds of thousands of Spokespeople for Libya’s
Doctors Without Borders in migrants hoping to reach government, the Interior
the Mediterranean Sea off Europe have made their way Ministry, the directorate and
Libya. Most had been held through Libya, where a lu- the coast guard did not an-
in trafficking warehouses and crative trafficking business swer phone calls or respond
government detention cen- has flourished in a country to messages seeking com-
ters in western Libya over the without a functioning gov- ment.
past four years. ernment, split for years be-
tween rival administrations Touré, the youngest of seven
They were among 60 mi- in the east and west, each siblings abandoned by their
grants who fled Libya on backed by armed groups and father, said that as an adoles-
Sept. 19 in two unseaworthy foreign governments. cent he watched others from
boats and were rescued a day his small Guinean town of
later by the Geo Barents. The The migrants, mostly from Kindia make it to Europe and
AP also obtained testimonies sub-Saharan Africa, told help pull their families out of
from many others collected the AP that detention cen- poverty.