https://arab.news/rwyx2
Libya no longer functions as a transit space between Africa and Europe. It has become an endpoint. For tens of thousands of migrants and refugees every year, Libya is where journeys stall, bodies accumulate, and survival becomes a matter of rough ransom calculations. What has emerged goes beyond muted abuse along migration routes, but a system that profits from captivity and, increasingly, from death itself. The discovery in early 2025 of mass graves near Jikharra and Kufra, holding at least 93 mutilated migrant bodies, did not reveal a hidden crime. It merely confirmed what survivors, aid workers, and residents have long known: Libya now contains killing fields linked directly to the management of migration.
European policymakers often speak of “irregular flows” and “external borders” — language that sanitizes the reality south of the Mediterranean. Libya sits at the center of Europe’s containment strategy. Since 2017, European funding, training, and equipment have turned Libyan armed groups into gatekeepers. Interceptions at sea have increased sharply. Between 2017 and 2024, Libyan forces intercepted and returned more than 130,000 people attempting to cross the central Mediterranean. Each interception represents not rescue, but forced return to detention, extortion, or disappearance.
