GENEVA: Libya was urged at a UN meeting on Tuesday to close detention centers where rights groups say migrants and refugees have been tortured, abused and sometimes killed.
Multiple states including Britain, Spain, Norway and Sierra Leone raised concerns at the meeting in Geneva about treatment of migrants in Libya, a major transit route for Africans fleeing conflict and poverty toward Europe. Some of them have been held in warehouses by traffickers where they have been subject to violence and extortion, according to a Dutch court case.
Norway’s ambassador Tormod Endresen called for protection of vulnerable migrants and an end to arbitrary detentions. Britain’s rights ambassador Eleanor Sanders echoed that and also sought unrestricted access for UN and other groups to mass graves. Some bodies of migrants found in mass graves earlier this year bore gunshot wounds, a UN agency said.
In an open letter to Libyan authorities published in parallel to the UN review, rights groups called for reforms, saying that armed groups were operating with impunity, obstructing courts and committing widespread abuses.
Libya has had little peace since a 2011 uprising against long-time autocrat Muammar Qaddafi and is between warring eastern and western factions.
