In one year, Libyan maritime forces arrested 21,700 exiles in the Mediterranean Sea. The figure exceeds the annual toll for 2023 (17,000 people intercepted) but remains lower than that of 2022 (24,600 people intercepted). Among these exiles forcibly brought back to Libya – while trying to reach European shores – are 1,500 women and 700 children.
All the people who attempt to cross the Mediterranean embark on dilapidated wooden or metal canoes, completely unsuitable for such journeys at sea. They are generally stopped by the coast guard in Libyan territorial waters or in international waters. – with the support of the European Union (EU).
Since 2017, the year of the signing of an agreement between Libya and Italy supported by Brussels, Europe has entrusted the Libyan authorities with the responsibility of coordinating rescues off their coasts (a task which previously fell to Rome or Valletta, Malta). The goal: to “stem” the arrival of migrants in Europe. The 2017 agreement provides that Italy will equip and train the Libyan authorities to intercept exiles in the Mediterranean.
For this reason, he has always been castigated by human rights NGOs. Not only because interventions at sea can be dramatic: on November 6, 2017, nearly 20 people, men, women and children, drowned in the Mediterranean due to the inaction of the Libyan authorities and their amateurism. . But also because exiles brought back against their will to Libya generally find themselves in prison where they are subjected to inhuman treatment (torture, beatings, humiliation, rape, even assassinations).
For years, the InfoMigrants editorial team has received messages from people held captive in Libya and subjected to all kinds of torture.
David Yambio, a South Sudanese activist now a refugee in Italy, also warns about the fate of migrants in Libya. Via his X account “Refugees in Libya”, he documents the numerous abuses suffered by exiles locked up in the country’s official or clandestine prisons. Latest example: the broadcast on January 6, 2025 of the photo of an Ethiopian woman gagged and tied in a cell. His captors are demanding $6,000 from his family for his release.
Photos and documents of tortured migrants are legion on the “Refugees in Libya” account and have been the subject of numerous articles. Libya has been in the grip of chaos since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Armed groups do not hesitate to kidnap migrants from sub-Saharan Africa in the street, on the route to exile or in their apartments, to film the torture that they inflict on them in order to extort money from their loved ones. It is also not uncommon for guards in official detention centers to sell migrants themselves to traffickers.
In November 2023, the editorial team relayed the – unbearable – images of three men and two women violently beaten by human traffickers in Libya. The victims were detained in the town of Bani Walid, around 200 km from Tripoli, and were begging for help.
In September 2022, InfoMigrants also obtained images of a Sudanese teenager tortured in Libya by his executioners, also demanding a ransom. The kidnapping and torture took place in western Libya.
