Arrested members of a migrant trafficking group admit to killing migrants and burying them in the desert.
Libyan police say they have dismantled a migrant smuggling network that not only “beat, tortured, and abused” its victims but may have also killed some of them and dumped their bodies in mass graves in the desert.
The operation took place in the central city of Zillah, though a police statement issued on Sunday did not disclose the exact number of suspects arrested. However, it detailed the various abuses committed against the migrants, including rape, sexual exploitation, starvation, and severe physical torture—such as melting plastic pipes on the victims’ backs.
The arrested smugglers admitted to killing migrants and burying them in the desert, according to the statement.
Two days earlier, officers had arrested four suspects on human trafficking charges—two Libyans, one Ethiopian, and one Sudanese.
The crackdown on migrant smuggling follows the discovery of two mass graves in separate locations earlier this month. Some of the bodies bore gunshot wounds, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
As of Friday, the number of bodies recovered from the mass grave in the Alkufra desert in southeastern Libya had risen to 58 unidentified individuals. Initially, 30 bodies were found near a makeshift detention center in Alkufra, while another 19 were discovered buried at a farm allegedly used by a trafficking network in Jikharra, a town 440 kilometers south of Libya’s second-largest city, Benghazi.
Despite ongoing investigations into Libya’s criminal smuggling networks, a video has surfaced showing Libyan personnel physically torturing a Pakistani migrant inside a rescue police station.
The Libyan human rights organization Libya Crimes Watch (LCW) has identified three perpetrators of the torture seen in the video, all of whom are reportedly members of the Misrata Security Directorate (MSD) police in the northwestern city of Misrata.
The crackdown comes about two weeks after a report accused both Libyan state and non-state actors of buying migrants from Tunisia and later demanding ransoms for their release. The reported ransom amounts ranged from €1,000 ($1,041) for immediate release to between €400 and €700 ($416–$729).
The report detailed the systematic abuses suffered by migrants throughout the process, from their arbitrary capture in Tunisia and alleged mistreatment by Tunisian forces to their detention in Libyan prisons.
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