Date: Sun, 3 May 2015 12:51:44 +0200
Migrants 'being held in cages at Tripoli zoo by Libyan armed groups'
Men, women and children waiting to be smuggled across the Mediterranean crammed into school classrooms and zoo enclosures in Libya, human rights organisation claims
Refugees are being held in cages in a former zoo in Tripoli by Libyan armed groups before they are smuggled across the Mediterranean, according to a human rights organisation that has documented dozens of cases of migrant torture.
Currun Singh, who is head of the Tripoli division of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), told The Telegraph that men, women and children are crammed into school classrooms and zoo enclosures adapted into makeshift prisons.
Many of the women are forced into prostitution until they become pregnant, at which point they are thrown back into detention.
Mr Singh said many of these detainees eventually make the crossing to Europe.
“Tripoli zoo was taken over by an armed militia after the revolution and is being used to house sub-Saharan migrants," he said. “The conditions are indescribable.
“These migrants often don’t have access to doctors and even when a condition is life-threatening, they can be denied care. There’s scabies and TB."
An illegal migrant prays beside others in Quwaiya detention center, east of Tripoli
Mr Singh, who has been based in Tripoli for two years after being invited by the EU to document human rights abuses, said conditions had become significantly worse in recent months. His comments come just weeks after 800 people perished in the Mediterranean in one of the worst ever migrant shipwrecks. Survivors told how they had paid smugglers hundreds of pounds to escape life in Libya.
"These prisons are so overcrowded," said Mr Singh. "There are two or three times the number of people they should hold. And in these conditions, with the miserable heat of Libya in the summer, disease is a big problem."
OMCT have recorded dozens of torture cases across the 17 official detention centres in Libya, and in more than 20 makeshift prisons. They have spoken to detainees who have been given electric shocks and burned with cigarettes.
“There’s a whole network of detention centres operated by the Ministry of the Interior, which manages migrant detainees," said Mr Singh. But these prisons are usually controlled not by government authorities, but by armed groups, who often have links to smugglers. And these people do end up in places like Rome.”