Date: Monday, 06 January 2020
The life of the girl from the Horn of Africa hanging, we wrote it seven days ago , is worth $ 12,500. But nobody intervenes and the horror stories continue from Bani Walid, unanimously considered the most cruel torture site in Libya. Another Eritrean inmate died here in recent days from torture with stick, knife and electric shock because he could not pay. In all they make six deaths in two months. This time we have not been able to know his generality and at least give him dignity in death. When the connection with hell near us opens, they arrive on the smartphone with the hum of a message inhuman photos and desperate requests for help, words of anguish and terror that in Italy and in the EU we have ignored by turning our heads or even blaming the victims.
«We eat one bread a day and one in the evening, we drink a glass of dirty water each. There are no toilets, ”one of them writes in broken English. "Hurry up, help us, we are exhausted," he continues. The group of 66 Eritrean prisoners who have been in the hands of Libyan traffickers for over two months has shrunk to 60 people crammed into the group of sheds that form the mega detention center in the countryside in the Tasni al Harbi district, on the outskirts of the tribe city of the Warfalla, located in the Misurata district, about 150 kilometers southeast of Tripoli. Lager owned by traffickers, inaccessible to UNHCR in a crossroads of migratory routes from the south (Sebha) and east (Kufra) to reach the coast, where almost all migrants in Libya stopped and paid a ransom to embark.
The kidnappers, confirmed several times the refugees from Democratic Eritrea first contacted by the fellow prisoners, bought them from the Eritrean trafficker Abuselam "Ferensawi", the Frenchman, one of the major human meat merchants in Libya today probably disappeared in Qatar to enjoy the proceeds of his crimes. Bani Walid, according to the testimonies also collected by the Italian lawyer based in London Giulia Tranchina, is a large tank of human meat from all over Africa, where prisoners are separated by nationality. The ransom price varies by source and is rising in view of the conflict. The Africans in the Horn are worth more to traffickers because Somalis and Eritreans often have relatives in the West who feel a lot of family ties and pay. Three months ago, Eritrean prisoners were worth 10 thousand dollars, today 2,500 dollars more because on the stock exchange of death the quotation of those who flee and is captured or of those who prolong their stay for insolvency and are repeatedly sold, goes up. Payment must be made by money transfer to Sudan or Egypt.
But it didn't help. The agency found that half of LibAid's employees are nominees on the payroll of the militias and the 50 dinars ($ 35) a day allocated by UNHCR for food supplies to each migrant, only 2 dinars were spent while the meals cooked they were redistributed among the guards or placed on the black market. According to the investigation, the money was also disbursed to Libyan subcontracting companies run by militiamen with current accounts in Tunisia, where they were exchanged in local currency and recycled. An internal email from the United Nations agency reveals that everyone was aware of it, but could not intervene. The UNHCR said it had eliminated the subcontracting system from January 1.