Over 12,000 detainees are being held in unofficial prisons and detention facilities across Libya. Thousands more are held illegally and often in “inhumane conditions in facilities controlled by armed groups or `secret’ facilities,” according to a report presented to the UN Security Council.
The report, which was delivered to the UN Security Council prior to the latest briefing by the UN Special Envoy, Abdoulaye Bathily, monitors the political, security, and economic developments in Libya from December to March.
The report also cited official statistics provided by the judicial police, and according to it, “the number of detainees in official detention centers, including those in pretrial detention, amounted to 19,730 as of March.”
UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres said in the report that the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) “continues to document cases of arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence, and other violations of international law in facilities operated by the government and other groups.”
“Female and male migrants and refugees continued to face heightened risks of rape, sexual harassment, and trafficking by armed groups, transnational smugglers and traffickers. As well as officials from the Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration, which operates under the Ministry of Interior,” he said.
Traffickers have exploited the chaos, and often pack desperate families into ill-equipped rubber or wooden boats that stall and founder along the perilous central Mediterranean route.
Since August, Guterres also criticized the expulsions from Libya’s eastern and southern borders of hundreds of nationals from Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan to neighbouring Sudan and Chad “without due process.”
“The expulsions did not respect the prohibition of collective expulsion and the return of people without their consent. This placed many asylum seekers and migrants in extremely vulnerable positions,” he said.
The International Organization for Migration in Libya (IOM) said earlier this week that 3,897 migrants were intercepted in the Mediterranean and returned to Libya, in 2023.
The IOM added that 236 migrants died at sea, while 174 people were missing. Among those intercepted were 99 children and 181 women.
