Libya, committed war crimes and crimes against humanity: various testimonies of victims of sexual slavery and exploited lonely children

ROME – Murder, rape, arbitrary detention, enslavement, suppression of any form of dissent, extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances: the range of crimes committed in Libya by state security forces and militias against migrants and Libyans is broad and paints a picture in dark colors on the situation of rights in the country. Most of the people who have been victims of the crimes listed, among other things, have not filed any official complaint for fear of reprisals, arrests, extortion and a generalized distrust in the judicial system. The report is the result of the work of the Independent Fact-Finding Mission, requested by the Human Rights Counciland is the result of work begun in 2016 to document violations of international and humanitarian law.

For migrants only experiences of violence. The investigation revealed that migrants were systematically tortured. Currently the country hosts more than 670,000 people on the move and the number has been growing steadily since 2021. Libya is an almost obligatory starting point for those who want to reach Europe. And it’s a place that most people get to by paying smugglers. All the migrants interviewed in the report said they had lived experiences of violence, both when they arrived in Libya and when they were held in official and unofficial detention centres. In the centers of Bani Walid and Sabratah, in particular, the UN has collected various testimonies from victims of sexual slavery.

The Libyan Coast Guard. According to the evidence collected by the Mission, the Coast Guard is in constant contact with those in charge of the al-Nasr detention centre. Abd al-Rahman al-Milad, also known as “Bija”, the head of the regional unit of the Libyan Coast Guard in Zawiyah, is on the UN Security Council’s sanctions list for his involvement in human trafficking and in smuggling. Yet third countries, i.e. Europe, have been collaborating for years with the Libyan Coast Guard to intercept departing migrants and bring them back to the country’s detention centers.

The responsibilities of the European Union. Based on the evidence it has gathered in these years of investigation, the UN Mission concludes that the European Union and its Member States, directly or indirectly, have provided monetary, technical and equipment support, such as boats, to the Libyan Coast Guard used in the detention of migrants. “We are not saying that the EU and the member states committed these crimes, but the support provided helped and abetted the commission of these crimes,” said Chaloka Beyani, one of the members of the independent mission.

The witness. “Our concern is not to die in the water, but to go back to the prison where we would continue to be oppressed and tortured by the guards,” said a migrant long held in one of the Libyan detention centers. Second Human Rights Watch32,450 people were intercepted by Libyan forces in 2021 and returned to a condition of arbitrary detention and abuse.

The children. According to the evidence collected by the team of experts, children, mainly but not only Syrians, aged between 15 and 18, are systematically recruited to fight. Many of the minors detained with or without parents suffered damage during armed clashes and unexploded ordnance.

Women. Rape is a daily reality in detention centres. “During the night the guards come in with flashlights and approach the women, take one, and rape her. They order us to sleep and cover ourselves with the mattress while they take her away,” said a witness in the center of Bani Walid. Pregnancies follow rape. Many women were forced to give birth in captivity, without any assistance from medical personnel. Moreover, since it is a crime to enter Libya illegally, women survivors of violence do not file a complaint and do not ask for medical assistance because they fear being prosecuted and punished.

Attacks on the rule of law. According to the results of the dossier, in recent years there have been numerous episodes of enforced disappearances of judges and prosecutors, of detainees who have been denied a lawyer and many cases that have been resolved without trial, only on the basis of the logic of tribal affiliations. Attacks against legal professionals have occurred in Benghazi, Tripoli, Sirte, Sabha.

Kidnapped lawyers. The report tells the story of a Tripoli lawyer who had publicly denounced the recruitment of children by the militias. The man was abducted from the streets of the city in April 2019, detained and interrogated. He was released on the condition that he not proceed with public complaints and any legal action. Another emblematic episode happened in 2021, when a lawyer from Benghazi was kidnapped near the Ajdabiya court, detained in inhumane conditions for a few days, and finally abandoned on the street, blindfolded and handcuffed. Another lawyer in August 2022 was kidnapped inside the Tripoli court, before the judges, held in Mitiga prison for eight hours, before being released due to external pressure. In Libya, there is no law that protects witnesses and victims in trials, nor a security force that protects courts, prosecutors’ offices and magistrates, in accordance with international practice.