Europe's Detention Hell-Hole in Libya: Migrants Raped, Tortured, Beaten

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The New Yorker, in collaboration with The Outlaw Ocean Project, an investigative non-profit that probes into lawlessness at sea, got to the bottom of something akin to a prison-hell that has been kidnapping migrants and throwing them into a cement-depot-turned-prison in Tripoli, Libya.

Many of the migrants reported in the investigative piece came from countries like Guinea-Bissau, Cameroon, and Ivory Coast. 

The cement storage depot, according to the news article, reopened in January 2021, with higher walls and barbed wire on the fences to prevent escape. The storage was dubbed 'al-Mabani', which is Arabic for The Buildings, and it is a detention facility.

On the gate, there was a sign that wrote “Directorate for Combatting Illegal Migration," and armed guards in blue and black guarded a blue-colored shipping container - presumably an office - which ran a prison that trapped in over 6,000 migrants - as of September 2021 - merely crossing the Mediterranean before being interrupted by Libyan Coast Guards. 

The Libyan Coast Guard may enjoy a name that sounds official, but it is rather a militia-backed and EU-funded group. The Trust Fund of the European Union pitched in tens of millions of dollars to strengthen the Libyan Coast Guards, turning them into a menacing proxy force. 

The New Yorker narrates the story of Aliou Cande, a migrant from Guinea-Bissau, who, at 3 AM, arrived in Al-Mabani: On a rubber dinghy holding more than a hundred migrants, on his way to join his two brothers in Europe, a Libyan Coastal Guard caught them and dragged them to the prison, pushing them into Cell No.4, which already held over 200 victims. 

There was no way anyone could know if one was kidnapped in Al-Mabani except through using one of the guards' phones, which the migrants had to pay for. Migrants argued who got to sleep in the shower because it had more ventilation, 'food' was presented in dog bowls, and there was just a toilet for every hundred migrants. Non-governmental organizations and human rights firms documented abuses which include victims being regularly abused and beaten and electric-shocked, children being raped by the guards, men and women being sold into forced labor. 

Now, who funded all this? The European Union. 

“The E.U. did something they carefully considered and planned for many years,” Salah Marghani, Libya’s Minister of Justice from 2012 to 2014, told The New Yorker. “Create a hellhole in Libya, with the idea of deterring people from heading to Europe.”

In the past six years, according to The New Yorker, the EU has fretted over the financial and political costs of dealing with migrants, particularly from sub-Saharan Africa, and has created a 'shadow immigration system' to curb migrants before reaching Europe. 

The EU did this by training and equipping a quasi-military organization - the Libyan Coast Guard - to sabotage humanitarian rescue operations and kidnap migrants crossing the Mediterranean. 

Al-Mabani is a profitable place, at least for the guards - the captured were made to pay around 2,500 Libyan dinars, the equivalent of $500, if they were to break free from the prison. 

The journalists were beaten, too

The research team of journalists was beaten, looted, and threatened by the EU-funded coast guard. The writer, Ian Urbina, was dragged from his hotel room, "One [armed man] held a gun to my forehead and yelled, “Get on the floor!” They placed a hood over my head, kicked and punched me, and stepped on my face, leaving me with two broken ribs, blood in my urine, and damage to my kidneys. Then they dragged me from the room."

The team was taken to an interrogation room where Urbina was beaten again, and his colleagues were intimidated and sexually harassed. The team's belts and jewelry were looted from them, and the writer was placed in an isolation cell. 

The captors, who claimed to be the Libyan Intelligence Service, told Urbina during the interrogation that it was illegal to interview migrants about abuses in al-Mabani.

The Libyan Intelligence Service is an arm for the National Unity government, which also happens to administer and supervise al-Mabani.